The Challenge

The UK vehicle manufacturer, Ford of Great Britain had a number of divisions purchasing vehicle delivery services for non contracted vehicle deliveries and used a brokerage service which would contact a number of multi car carriers by fax, looking for capacity and a price. This manual process was slow and incurred added cost of brokerage.

Having built a brand new refurbishment center in Southampton, Ford focused on introducing a robust process to find carriers and arrange and manage vehicle deliveries throughout the UK. A new team was setup to procure and manage the ad hoc vehicle deliveries.

The company also wanted to ensure they achieved a fair market price for each vehicle delivery and needed to expand their carrier base to support the growing single vehicle movement requirements beyond the multi car carriers who contract to deliver the bulk of new Ford vehicles.

The Solution

• Online booking for internal and Dealer service requests
• Real-time visibility of vehicle deliveries
• Damage/vehicle condition reporting
• Dealer receives inbound visibility

The new team at Ford identified the networked vehicle delivery communications platform from Car Delivery Network as the solution, which has transformed miscellaneous vehicle delivery procurement and management from an external brokerage based fax system for finding vehicle transport capacity and price, to a real-time electronic marketplace and dispatching solution, complete with ePOD visibility. The CDN software ‘vinDISPATCH’ is networked, with all parties electronically connected, including the delivery agent. The carrier’s driver uses the award winning ePOD solution ‘vinDELIVER’, which provides the carrier and Ford with real-time delivery information.

‘Simply upload vehicle transportation requirements to the cloud’

CDN provides Ford with a customer vehicle delivery booking portal. This makes the process a lot easier, enabling all requirements for transporting vehicles to be uploaded to the CDN vinDISPATCH, creating a ‘marketplace’ which advertises delivery requirements to multiple approved carriers.”

The flexibility of vinDISPATCH has allowed Ford to add a second tier of carriers - from four or five large carriers to smaller, independent operators, all on one system. According to Wayne Pollock, Director of Car Delivery Network (CDN), “This project has been a great success. Ford believe there’s great potential for more vehicle movements and benefit. We know that Ford feel that vinDISPATCH is a really good system and has lived up to all expectations.’

The Results

• Improved control
• Greater efficiency
• Clear cost savings
• Improved productivity

Since the implementation of CDN’s vinDISPATCH, Ford has seen increased productivity and reduced costs. The number of vehicles delivered per week has risen to 450 per week currently from just 50 in February 2015 - a massive 700% increase, which has been facilitated and supported by CDN.

CDN has helped Ford drive down the cost and the system has increased the speed with which vehicles can be made ready for sale. Penalties were incurred for vehicles not delivered within a required time frame – so now that vehicles can be processed more quickly and Ford can see precisely the delivery status, penalty costs can be avoided. "Ford certainly has more control and visibility over their vehicle movements, thanks to the CDN platform,” says Wayne Pollock.

Visibility of vehicle condition on the system has proved a very important additional benefit and where vehicles have reported damage on delivery, it has been vital in determining accountability and cost allocation post repair.

The Future

Going forward, Pollock believes there is much more that CDN could offer Ford.

“Customer feedback confirms that CDN has delivered excellent support and training for the office team at Ford, as well as a great system with huge potential. We’ve worked in partnership to tailor the vinDISPATCH app for Ford’s specific requirements and now it’s a question of spending time together to explore how else we could support them and provide even greater benefits.”

Wayne Pollock, Car Delivery Network