TORONTO ONTARIO – Cetaris is pleased to announce that First Student, Inc., part of FirstGroup America, has successfully completed the first phase of the implementation of Cetaris’ Web Fleet Assistant software. The implementation across their maintenance network in the United States and Canada allows them to substantially reduce costs, increase their ability to track and collect warranty, reduce breakdowns, improve safety, enhance asset specifications for future acquisitions and maximize the utilization of resources.
The key business drivers for selecting the Web Fleet Assistant solution was its ability to support FirstGroup’s sophisticated business requirements for best practices, compliance, and warranty; its ability to scale across hundreds of locations, thousands of users, tens of thousands of assets; and Cetaris’ proven track record for successful implementation of enterprise wide projects on time and on budget.
“We have been able to use Web Fleet Assistant to support our goal to continuously improve our business processes. We have implemented over 50 Standard Operating Procedures that directly supports our implementation of our Reliability Based Maintenance program. This in turn supports our focus on safety and compliance which are paramount to our company” says Steve Helriegel, FirstGroup Maintenance Systems Analyst. “From an operational perspective Web Fleet Assistant has given us visibility across our entire maintenance network allowing us to monitor performance, suggest improvements, and implement best practices at individual maintenance facilities. From a financial perspective we have been able to achieve significant increases in warranty recovery from both the OEMs as well as service replacement parts. The project has been very successful”.
“FirstGroup America followed a very thorough selection process, an extensive Requirements Phase that involved all functional areas of their company, and they have now completed one of the most thorough and disciplined implementation phases that we have had the privilege to have been involved with to date.” says Ric Bedard, President of Cetaris. “FirstGroup has been very progressive in implementing Web Fleet Assistant, providing us feedback on where we need to make key enhancements in the system to allow them to continue to set new goals every year for improving their operation.”
About FirstGroup America
First Student, Inc. is part of FirstGroup America, the largest student transportation provider in North America carrying 4 million students to and from school each day on more than 60,000 buses. First Student began from the acquisition of Ryder Student Transportation, several other large busing companies and more recently the acquisition of Laidlaw Education Services. FirstGroup America, the leader in safe, reliable, sustainable transportation, owns and operates thousands of transit, maintenance and school bus services in the United States and Canada.
Our parent company, FirstGroup plc, is the world’s leading transportation provider which carries more than 2.5 billion people annually and employs more than 137,000 employees across the UK and North America. FirstGroup is now the UK's largest bus and rail company, with over 38,000 employees, 9,000 buses in service and passenger rail and rail freight operations.
Our acquisition of Laidlaw in October 2007 makes us North America’s leading school transportation services provider delivering the most reliable, safe, and cost-effective school transportation services available.
About Cetaris
Cetaris Software Inc. as a premier provider of enterprise asset management solutions helping organizations around the world reduce the cost and complexity associated with managing their fleet related assets. Their solution Fleet Assistant was built by fleet people for fleet people, whose evolution began on the shop floor with an understanding and emphasis on the needs of fleet owners, managers, service technicians and administrative personnel. Their solution continues to evolve addressing all the key requirements a business demands to optimize the performance and productivity of its fleet related assets. Consequently, today some of the world’s largest; most sophisticated and efficient organizations depend on the Web Fleet Assistant to manage millions of their assets in more than 50 countries worldwide.
Headquartered in Toronto, Cetaris is more than just a software provider, combining exceptional human capital, with best of breed business processes and world class software tools to deliver a robust, turnkey solution.
More information is available at www.cetaris.com. Contact: Ric Bedard 416.679.2720 rbedard@cetaris.com