Its 41-strong fleet of vans collects 4.25 million bags of donated clothing from individuals and corporate partners – such as TK Maxx and Tesco – each year, delivering to 595 charity shops across the UK.
The charity has now digitised its formerly paper-based workflow by linking Webfleet to the Calidus VEhub app on the TomTom Telematics PRO 8275 driver terminal.
This allows drivers to enter the number of bags collected and delivered, as well as location details – all via drop down menus – enabling the charity to improve efficiency and maximise value from public and corporate donations.
“Fleet efficiency is key to overall profitability,” comments Bina de Wilde, business development and innovation, retail for Cancer Research UK.
“If someone donates a designer suit at one of our discount shops, moving it quickly and efficiently to one of our premium stores means we can sell it for its full value, giving us more to fund vital research to help beat cancer sooner,” she explains.
“We were using a paper-based system before, which, at best, only delivered 20% of the information we needed and was very prone to error,” continues de Wilde.
“Now, we can see a much more accurate picture of stock levels required by different shops, how one shop may be supporting another with stock, and critically, how much more value we get from moving our stock from a low to a high value outlet.”
The scheme has been managed by the Charity Fleetcare Alliance, which brings together fleet suppliers to help charities save money by improving fleet efficiency.