Freeway Fleet Systems has won a high-profile Innovation Challenge for their fleet-in-the-pocket smartphone app. Freeway was presented with the Gold Award at the UK’s National Exhibition Centre (NEC) in Birmingham. The Challenge gave technology suppliers a new platform to showcase their efforts in driving the industry forward and was launched at the UK’s annual bus and coach event, Coach & Bus UK. Freeway’s handy fleet management app was shortlisted after a public vote by visitors to the show, which attracted almost 6000 professionals from the bus and coach industry. Finalists delivered a 90 second pitch to a panel of industry judges led by Graham Vidler, CEO of the Confederation of Passenger Transport (CPT). Freeway’s fleet maintenance and management system is used by fleet, transport and bus operators across the world including the UK, Bahrain, South Africa, Ireland and Singapore. Freeway’s fleet-in-your-pocket was designed for management and staff with responsibility for planning and assigning work or authorising purchases relating to fleet maintenance and compliance. It provides a single smartphone interface for everything from Earned Recognition KPIs and Staff Overview to Defect Recording, Time-Sheet entry, Parts Purchasing, Authorising, Receipting and Issuing. The culmination of dozens of Freeway customer led innovations, the development puts all aspects of cost-control and compliance into a mobile device application to improve management and efficiency, reducing bottlenecks to speed workflows. Accepting the Gold award, Patrick Tandy, MD of Freeway Fleet Systems said. “Winning this award is testament to the team that’s behind the product – and the quality and the effort that’s gone into making it possible. All the ideas come from our customers, and we have the privilege of being able to take their ideas and put them into action.” As part of the move to mobile working, fleet-in-your-pocket can benefit managers, stores staff, drivers, engineering staff and accounts with immediate access to more accurate information with less time-consuming processing. With the DVSA’s Earned Recognition Scheme officially sanctioning digital record keeping it is clear that this is now also the way forward for managing compliance. Freeway has taken advantage of the latest cloud and mobile technology to bring tasks previously only undertaken on central office systems onto the mobile devices with a simple to use interface. Managers can view key statistics on scheduling, spend, and Earned Recognition compliance live and from the workshop floor. The app also provides an oversight of what each staff member in the workshop is doing at that exact point in time.