ALTEN GmbH digitizes its vehicle fleet – for efficient and error-free reporting

Ensuring sophisticated reporting

ALTEN is an international IT service partner and development provider. ALTEN GmbH has a large fleet consisting of 356 company vehicles, which also includes the fleets of two sister companies. The company experiences around 20–25 driver changes per month. Due to this setup, the fleet management staff faced a high administrative workload. Without a software solution, reporting was extremely complicated and time-consuming. The team manually filled out an Excel spreadsheet, which could only be edited by one person at a time. In addition, employees had to manually sign off on fuel receipts. Over time, the Excel spreadsheet reached its limits, making it impossible to ensure sophisticated reporting.

Simplified processes thanks to Avrios and Vimcar

In 2020, the company decided to fully digitize its fleet management and chose the solutions from Avrios. Although maintaining data remains very important for fleet manager Sarina Russo, Avrios noticeably simplifies many processes. With the software, the team can easily generate individual reports without having to go through multi-page printouts first. Thanks to Avrios, Sarina Russo knows that the data is accurate and can detect errors more easily. Using the software, the team has even been able to identify “wrong refuelings” within the company. In addition, ALTEN GmbH no longer has to report a change of vehicle user individually to its leasing partners — the software handles that automatically, saving valuable time.

ALTEN GmbH took its first step toward digitizing its fleet five years ago: in 2018, the company initially introduced the Vimcar digital logbook. With it, the team manages the company’s 20 pool vehicles as well as all drivers who are required to keep a logbook. Vimcar also helps streamline processes within the company — especially for trips themselves and during accounting.

Arife Yilmaz from the payroll department at ALTEN GmbH finds it practical that Vimcar can be used on personal smartphones and is very easy to operate. Drivers simply select the type of trip in the system and enter the name and purpose of the trip. From the payroll employee’s perspective, this is a huge relief for drivers, who also have seven days to make corrections or add entries later. The payroll team itself benefits from Vimcar’s tax office–compliant reporting, as the system automatically and conveniently separates taxable private trips from business trips. This is particularly helpful for payroll accounting.

Another advantage: the data records are easy to store and are always available in the correct form during tax or social security audits.

“With Vimcar, everything is preconfigured. Our drivers can save their trips as templates with just a few clicks. This makes keeping a logbook very easy for them.”

Arife Yilmaz, Payroll employee at ALTEN GmbH

Easy to use for everyone

Yilmaz’s colleague, Sarina Russo, is also convinced by the user-friendliness of the software solutions: “Anyone who can use a smartphone can use Avrios and Vimcar,” says the fleet manager.

The software is intuitive to operate, and searching for figures or names is straightforward. As a result, both users were able to get started quickly and directly without any training. Flexibility is also important to them: Russo can access the software from any computer or smart device, and even quick data checks work smoothly when done remotely.

The high level of user-friendliness was also confirmed by the drivers: “The software is actually largely self-explanatory,” says Arife Yilmaz. “Everything is very clear and works through learning by doing,” reports the payroll employee.

If problems do arise, troubleshooting is very quick, and the hotline is always available. Yilmaz is very satisfied with the support.
“The operation is so intuitive and straightforward that I can now use the software in my sleep.”

Sarina Russo, Fleet Manager, ALTEN GmbH