A mile tracker and mileage app which reduces fuel use, lowers emissions, and improves legal compliance for Arnold Clark.
Arnold Clark is one of Europe’s largest car dealership groups. While better known as a B2C company, they also have a strong presence in the B2B market and operate 6 vehicle leasing business centres which specialise in the management of public and private car and van fleets.
In early 2015, the team at Arnold Clark Vehicle Management (ACVM) approached Screenmedia with a brief to help them develop a mobile app solution for vehicle mileage capture.
Companies in the UK are required by law to submit journey data to the HMRC on a monthly basis for taxation purposes, and the onus is on the company to keep detailed logs of business journeys and vehicle mileage in order to proof the vehicle has not be used for private journeys.
As Arnold Clark’s B2B business grew, it became clear that offline methods of journey data capture were inaccurate and often prone to human error. This new app would allow fleet users to track their business journeys and submit vehicle mileage to a secure database, streamlining the capture and tracking of journey data for Arnold Clark’s clients.
Our team worked to develop a design style, look and feel which complemented the brand, audience, and tone of the piece; taking into account contemporary approaches to UI design for smartphone and ensuring the design could extend consistently to both iOS and Android.
The result was a highly contemporary, open, accesible and easy to use app complete with a light, customer-centric and playful interface. Unique to ACVM in its design style, the UI was also simple and functional, with clear signposting to the app’s core content and functionality.
Log journeys using the GPS tracker. Once a journey is logged it can be submitted directly to the database.
View old journeys and re-submit journeys submitted in areas where internet connection is poor.
Search for cars in the ACVM database and log journeys when travelling on business or using rental vehicles.
View interactive maps showcasing your chosen route on any given journey.
To future-proof the app, we developed the app using Xamarin, a highly effective framework for delivering native apps across multiple platforms which allows the business logic code layer to be written once and shared across several native user interfaces.
In order for the new app to integrate with Arnold Clark’s existing infrastructure, ACVM’s database needed to be upgraded. Our team architected and specified the requirement for a restful API to ensure best practice communication protocol between the app and existing database.
With additional phases of the app build in mind; we planned, designed, and built the UX/UI journeys to complement and allow strategic growth into areas of functionality such as account management, vehicle recovery, vehicle servicing, notifications, and driving analytics.
As the app would be used several times a day, a high quality UX and UI was imperative to the success of the app. Consequently, our approach to the design style, look and feel was customer-centric, high quality and complementary to the existing brand.
To help our clients record accurate mileages for business journeys we worked with Screenmedia to develop an easy to use mobile app. With no hardware to install, Screenmedia have made it easier than ever for our customers to track mileage accurately, reduce fuel use, and lower emissions.
With the app now complete and in field trials with customers, Arnold Clark have not only successfully innovated around a fundamental business requirement, but now offer their business customers a straightforward, simple and easy to use mechanism for legal compliance.
The app's successes in solving the inconsistencies and inaccuracies around journey data submission have been great, with the HRMC themselves commending Arnold Clark for their development in this space and concluding that the accuracy of journey data will be significantly enhanced by utilising the GPS capability of mobile devices. Customer feedback in the space has also been highly favourable, with the app receiving praise for its clean interface and ease of use.
