How does Rohlik Group rate our cooperation?

We saved Rohlik Group 77% of the original cost of vehicle monitoring and the related cold chain monitoring.

Rohlik.cz is the first Czech startup unicorn, meaning the first Czech startup to pass a valuation of one billion dollars. You probably know it already, but for completeness: it is a successful Czech online grocery store that has expanded into several European countries, including Hungary, Austria, Germany and Romania.

Why did Rohlik approach us?

At the end of 2018, the fleet of Rohlik (Velká Pecka s.r.o.) numbered 200 vehicles and was already equipped with a monitoring system. Rohlik was also renting vehicles from Autoexpert spol. s r.o., which used the monitoring system we supply. This allowed Rohlik to compare both systems in its own operations, and given the difference in reliability and in the benefits of the application's features, it decided to work with us.

How did our cooperation go?

Our cooperation began in 2019. The goal was not just to replace the system with a more reliable one, but also to look for further improvements straight away. Together we reviewed the entire last-mile delivery process and came up with several proposals, which we put in place from the very first GPS installations.

• Before our cooperation began, Rohlik used two services in its vehicles. The first was fleet management (GPS monitoring), which we replaced with the system we supply. The second was a standalone temperature sensor with data transmission, and that service cost more than the fleet management itself. We therefore proposed adding temperature sensors to the newly supplied GPS tracking devices. The temperature data is now transmitted by the GPS tracker, so there was no longer any need to pay for the expensive standalone temperature sensor service. Thanks to the fees saved on the replaced standalone sensors, this step alone saved Rohlik more than the cost of renting the new, reliable GPS devices and running our fleet management application. The total saving on the original costs came to 77%.
• The vehicle can only be started after driver identification, which ensures that every trip has an identified driver – nearly all trips in the trip journal show the driver. This is essential for tracing who was responsible for a traffic accident, determining liability for fines, improving how drivers treat company vehicles and more.
• Monitoring compliance with speed limits – reducing the risk of accidents.
• API – passing data on vehicle movements and cargo space temperature to the client's other systems via the API.
• The “Who was here” feature for quickly finding out which vehicle in the fleet was at a chosen place at a chosen time.
• And many other improvements.

In 2020 Covid-19 arrived and Rohlik began to grow from 200 vehicles to 2,000. For us, this period of very intensive cooperation – in the Czech Republic as well as in every other country Rohlik expanded into – was a major test of our flexibility and our ability to come up with innovative solutions, not only for the fleet but also for uncompromising quality control (continuous monitoring of the temperature in the cargo space). The vehicles were mainly cars, but also cargo bikes, electric motorbikes, containers and electric vehicles. It was a time full of restrictions, uncertainty, sudden reversals, closed borders and so on. Both these restrictions and the higher costs in Western Europe pushed us to innovate. The key innovation was the strategic decision to use self-install GPS trackers that the client can plug into the OBD II port – the vehicle's diagnostic socket – themselves. The device not only draws power from this socket but also reads the data it needs (e.g. the odometer reading, vehicle speed and, for electric vehicles, the battery charge level or the range on the current charge). We handled temperature measurement with temperature sensors that the client fixes in the cargo space; they transmit the temperature data to the GPS tracker via Bluetooth. We used the same technology for driver identification cards, whose presence is detected automatically without drivers having to hold a chip up to a reader. All this eliminated the cost of installing GPS trackers (and removing them when a vehicle is taken out of service) and of sending technicians out to fit or remove them. Compared with GPS trackers installed by a technician, the total saving on introducing and running the fleet management system reached 59%.

We managed it partly because we are driven by the enthusiasm of being able to support such an exceptional Czech company in its growth with our work, know-how, proactive approach and a great system.

The benefits of our cooperation at a glance:

• Replacing a separate temperature measurement solution saved 77% of the original cost of running the fleet management system and measuring the cargo space temperature.
• Nearly all trips have a registered driver.
• Flexible, proactive cooperation that supported rapid growth from 200 to 2,000 vehicles in 7 countries during the Covid restrictions.
• Using self-install (OBD) GPS trackers and Bluetooth peripherals saved 59% of costs compared with the conventional types of devices installed in Western Europe.

How is our cooperation continuing?

Everything we introduced in previous years continues to bear fruit. Now there is more time to look for further savings and optimisations and to make further use of the data collected from the fleet.