High Prairie School Division #48
Matrix Booking helps High Prairie School Division #48 regulate use of vehicles
Background
High Prairie School Division No. 48 is an education provider located in Alberta, Canada who deliver educational programmes and services to approximately 3,200 students throughout the region. Serving a broad range of communities across the province of Alberta means that High Prairie School Division No. 48 needs to provide staff with regular access to a vehicle so that they can travel to partner schools.
Unable to rely on public transportation and the restrictions in its use, an appropriate form of transport is required to reach some remote and distant places such as Slave Lake, Falher and Joussard, which in some cases are up to 60km away from the head office. There was no reliable process in place to monitor their fleet of vehicles, so High Prairie School Division No. 48 contacted Matrix Booking to seek a solution.
Managing a fleet of vehicles
Matrix Booking is more than just a room and desk booking solution, and due to the flexible nature of the product, it can be adapted to manage any ‘bookable’ item within an organisation of any size seamlessly, whether it be desks, rooms, cars, projectors, bedrooms, hotel rooms. The list is endless!
A WebEx session was arranged to demonstrate all the product capabilities and features and to understand and explore all the requirements. Following a review of all options, High Prairie School Division No. 48 decided Matrix Booking was the perfect tool to manage their fleet of cars – as well as their meeting rooms. The challenge for High Prairie School Division No. 48 was to understand the movements of each vehicle during each working day: where the vehicles are, who has the vehicle, what they are using it for, who they are visiting and when it’s due back.
The Matrix Booking team reviewed these needs and implemented a booking solution that would allow users to reserve vehicles in 15-minute slots. This approach now offers full visibility of the fleet and also provides information on where vehicles are at all times – and who has it booked.The data produced via Matrix Booking now provides a level of insight that was not available before. From booking volumes, utilisation through to peak usage periods – High Prairie School Division No. 48 can now make commercial decisions based on the use of any vehicle in the fleet. If a car is in high demand, as it’s needed to navigate more challenging roads or needs extra space to transport educational materials, they may need to look at adding another similar vehicle. The same applies to cars that may not be in demand, which means it’s not financially viable and can be replaced with one that is more suitable.
Achievements
A robust, flexible and scalable system for tracking their fleet of vehicles is now in place, which has delivered a level of efficiency for administrators previously not available. More than 500 full and part-time employees, who directly supplement the endeavours of over 200 school-based teachers and administrators, no longer have to concern themselves with the red tape involved in identifying, locating and booking a vehicle when needed and can easily book in advance for all future needs.
After implementing the system in a very short space of time for fleet management, High Prairie School Division No. 48 has also now grown the solution by adding meeting rooms alongside the vehicle management – as Matrix Booking is a Software as a Service solution, so is ‘pay-as-you-go’. The process was quick and easy, so staff can now use the same system and method for room booking and management as they do for vehicles.
