How Kiloutou gained 15% in productivity.

Introducing the company and the problems encountered.

Kiloutou, a French equipment hire firm, employs 3,000 members of staff across 500 agencies both within France and abroad. The company carries out 90% of its activity with professionals and the remaining 10% with private individuals.

At Kiloutou, drivers had been working with hard copies of documents to record their equipment delivery slips and repeat orders for a long time. Aiming to boost its reliability and responsiveness, Kiloutou decided to computerize its entire logistics process.

Choosing the solution.

The project’s initial objectives were to computerize the paper reports and to structure information. Four selection criteria were adopted among the different solutions evaluated:

• The company’s continuity: Kiloutou wanted to find a sustainable company which could guarantee it both service availability and service scalability.
• An easy-to-use solution which could be adapted to Kiloutou’s industry-specific business needs, so that Kiloutou could take control to configure the solution by itself.
• A solution which allows for swift deployment, particularly on consumer devices.
• A solution which could be interfaced with Kiloutou’s existing information system.

And out of all the solutions it examined, Kiloutou opted for Praxedo’s offering.

Main benefits of the solution.

The Praxedo work order management solution has meant that the entire logistics chain could be computerized. “Over the course of one year, more than 500,000 equipment movement operations have been dealt with on a tablet or smartphone. This means that 500,000 delivery or return sheets no longer exist and have been digitized,” explains Jean-Luc Benoît, Logistics Manager at Kiloutou. Any photos taken by drivers are automatically associated with the corresponding delivery or repeat slip and are updated in the Kiloutou information system, so Kiloutou’s customers no longer need to move an inch if and when an equipment-related dispute arises. Departure and return photos are sent automatically by fax or email — to the immense satisfaction of Kiloutou’s customers.

Three years on from Praxedo being implemented, Kiloutou’s management team admits that the computerization project has been a resounding success. The fact that the Praxedo solution has been generalized to all the drivers has allowed the company to make order-related productivity gains of 15% and thereby achieve time savings for drivers, in addition to improving both responsiveness and information, which is highly appreciated by customers.

The application was swiftly adopted by drivers, who are now its main sponsors: “It has become very clear that, in the event of smartphone failure and our drivers having to revert to the paper forms, we have to send them a replacement smartphone quickly since they no longer want to use the old paper system,” concludes Olivier Laigle, Head of Project Organization and Change Management at Kiloutou.