Pinewood vehicle fleet management integrate driving licence checks into its dealer management software

Pinewood has integrated driving licence checking with the DVLA database into its Pinnacle dealer management software.

By clicking on a button within Pinnacle’s onscreen menu, users can access Pinewood’s Licence Link service, originally launched as a standalone product last year.

Licence Link was originally developed by Pinewood’s sister company CFC Solutions for the fleet sector and has since proven to be a major success for both businesses.

Research by Pinewood suggests that around one in seven dealer employees have points on their licence, representing a major risk management issue that requires regular monitoring.

Pinewood managing director Neville Briggs said: "In recent years, changes in corporate risk management, especially the arrival of the Corporate Manslaughter Act, have made the checking of licences an essential task for dealer managers but it remains one that can be onerous and difficult to manage, especially using a paper based system or spreadsheet.

"By integrating Licence Link into our Pinnacle DMS, we have provided an extremely easy and cost effective way for dealer managers to automate the whole process, identifying drivers who represent a higher risk and, crucially, supporting dealers with an auditable trail of the checks made.

"Just one employee who is banned or using a dummy driving licence could lead to a massivech third party claim for a dealer with their insurance company refusing to payout because basic checks haven’t been made. Licence Link is an easy way to prevent this possibility."

Licence Link is designed to make the task of licence checking as simple as possible. Once basic driving licence information is entered onto the system, dealer managers can choose how often automatic checks are made with the DVLA database – for example, annually for low mileage, low risk drivers or more frequently for high mileage, high risk employees.

Risk summary reports will automatically group drivers into different levels of risk group – for example, those with 1-3, 4-7, 8-12 and 12 plus points, and Licence Link can be set up so that those with higher numbers of points are checked more often.

Automatic alerts are sent to the dealer manager if the DVLA checks show changes to endorsements, the categories of vehicle that an employee is allowed to drive or if there are events such as disqualification or a photo card expiring.

The data sent to the DVLA is encrypted for security reasons. Pinewood recently attained the ISO27001 international data security accreditation, providing customers with a high degree of reassurance that all data it handles is as safe as possible.

Further features in Licence Link include the ability to upload and store document scans against each driver record, such as an image of each driver’s licence and driver declarations. These files are held online and encrypted securely.

Access to Licence Link is via a credit payment scheme. To run checks, a dealer buys credits in advance and as each licence check is made, the system displays the credits remaining, providing a constant balance reminder for the dealer manager.