It often seems like one cannot read about business without the words "web," "Internet," and "e-commerce" popping up over and over again. While the Internet is evolving into an excellent business tool, in-house software is still alive and well. Wyeth-Ayerst Labs in Philadelphia, PA, has developed a fleet management software program that gives it the security of owning its fleet data with the flexibility and utility needed to manage a large fleet.

Managing Maintenance

The driving force behind Wyeth-Ayerst's need for an in-house system was managing the maintenance and repair of its 3,700-vehicle fleet. Jack O'Donnell, director of fleet services, has been running the Wyeth-Ayerst fleet for 20 years.

"We began the process in the early '80s," he says. "We were managing our own maintenance, providing authorization for repairs, and we needed a system to automate the process."

Wyeth-Ayerst used (and still uses) a national account program (currently Consolidated Service Corp.) to purchase preventive maintenance and tires. It uses a preventive maintenance coupon book for basic work. If the shop discovers that the vehicle required additional work, beyond that on the coupon, it contacts Wyeth-Ayerst for approval.

"We provided a purchase order to the shop for the additional work," says O'Donnell. "Our manual system was cumbersome and paper-intensive." Wyeth-Ayerst first looked at the marketplace to see if there was a program it could purchase. "The 'canned' software we looked at didn't really fit what we were trying to accomplish," O'Donnell recalls, "so we began to plan our own system." O'Donnell met with the Wyeth-Ayerst information services (IS) department and outlined what was needed. IS began to work on a fleet system using a relational database program called Paradox. "I guess we were a bit ahead of the curve in that this was a PC-based system from the start," O'Donnell says. Most fleet management systems in the early '80s were mainframe systems.

Automated Purchase Orders

The first module that was produced was designed to automate the issuance of purchase orders to shops and related processes. "When a call comes in for repair authorization, we generate a purchase order right off the system," O'Donnell explains. "The P.O. is automatically numbered." The issuer enters the work to be authorized, any notes or comments, prints the purchase order, and sends a copy to the shop. The order is maintained in the system for future reference. "You can imagine how much paper this system has saved and how much easier our recordkeeping has become," O'Donnell says. The shop does the work and the billing flows through CSC. The database maintains a complete maintenance and repair history for each vehicle. "Although we've tweaked the system over the years, we like to think we did it right the first time, and it is essentially the same as it was a decade ago," he said.

Next Steps

O'Donnell knew there were a number of other important functions the system would be able to automate, including inventory, accident management, and fleet management reporting. "The system evolved over the years," he says. "We've added other functions to the original maintenance management process and now have a fully functional fleet management tool." The company's entire inventory is maintained in the system. O'Donnell receives regular inventory updates from his lessors, Wheels and ARI. "We download our inventory files directly from ARI's online system," he says. "Wheels provides us with a diskette on a monthly basis." As Wyeth-Ayerst makes changes in inventory (such as new orders, deliveries, and transfers), the lessors update their own systems, and those changes are reflected in the data downloaded to O'Donnell's system.

Wyeth-Ayerst also uses CSC for accident management services, and this data is also provided. "CSC sends us a diskette monthly, which has all of our accident and subrogation data," O'Donnell says.

Using Pre-Formatted Reporting

All of this data, inventory, maintenance purchase orders and histories, and accident-related costs are of little value unless the user can produce management reports. Wyeth-Ayerst's system enables O'Donnell and his staff to manipulate data in just about any way they require. "The existence of the P.O. and maintenance histories, for example, enables us to manage transactions, but we need to track costs on a macro basis," O'Donnell explains. The system contains both pre-formatted reports, which O'Donnell uses for regular management of costs, as well as an ad hoc report writer, which allows O'Donnell and his staff to drill down to more detailed and specific data, and to respond to requests for information from the field and management.

Another feature the system has is the ability to audit invoicing. "The database maintains a rolling average for the coupon billings," explains O'Donnell. "For example, the 20,000-mile coupon might bill out at so many dollars. The system takes our billing and each coupon billing is compared to this average." Exceptions are reported and O'Donnell and his staff can research to determine why there is a difference. Finally, billings are broken out automatically by accounting codes and charged to the appropriate function or location.

The system is installed on a client server, and O'Donnell has six users. "We're probably going to change our database program," he says. "The Paradox product has become obsolete, we'll look at others, such as Oracle."