Digital Tachograph Software

When the recession hit, it hit the building industry hard and PVC Building Supplies Ltd were no exception, fortunately the dedicated team of staff, loyal customers and the flexible entrepreneurial leadership from PVC Building Supplies Managing Director Spencer Wright saw the business making the right moves at the right times.

While it was a tough ride we were able to make various changes to our operations in order to carry the business forward. One of the side effects however was for some projects to go on hold - one of these projects was the procurement of two new vehicles for our fleet.

Recent success has put us in a position to purchase the new vehicles and with it came a number of IT based queries. The first to come my way as IT Manager was researching new software to work with the new digital tachographs to be installed in the vehicles.

Data stored on the digital tachograph is downloaded via a smart card and then uploaded via a USB card reader. Browsing for software options online yielded a plethora of choices with the vast majority being web based applications where data is aggregated and stored in the cloud. All vendors made very similar offers with a selection of standard reports usually with the option to build bespoke reports.

During my search the one thing I failed to tap into was a set of standards for tachograph software. After bouncing around VOSA’s phone system I made contact with one of the tachograph specialists for my area who confirmed there was no industry standard for the software. The only requirement enforced to ourselves is to keep either a 12 or 18 months history of data on record.

While VOSA could make no direct recommendation it became clear during the conversation that there were two market leaders for tachograph software: the RHA (Road Haulage Association) and the FTA (Freight Transport Association). The advice was to take a look at these systems and compare both costs and functionality with other vendors in the market.

At this stage we are still not clear as to our full requirements from the digital tachograph software. The obvious gain we can see for the business is the speed at which information can be uploaded and converted into meaningful reports. This will no doubt improve our monitoring process and reduce the need for manual storage of tachograph charts.

Richard Uphill

IT & Projects Manager

PVC Building Supplies Ltd

www.pvcbuildingsupplies.com