One management system for the services, staff, fleet and administration of an environmental cooperative
An environmental services cooperative with over 200 employees uses EcoGest to unify service planning, staff, vehicle fleet and administration.
The client
An Italian social cooperative with over 200 employees, working in environmental services, remediation, and land management and maintenance.
Every day the organisation coordinates numerous operational services, each with its own frequencies, schedules, dedicated vehicles, specifically qualified staff and set routes, and it must be able to react quickly to absences, breakdowns or unfinished activities.
Key results
- Service planning centralised in a single system
- Better visibility of staff and vehicle availability
- Resources assigned consistently with each service
The starting point
Day-to-day operations required services, operators, vehicles, equipment and routes to be coordinated at the same time, based on actual availability. Each service may require one or more operators and specific vehicles; staff selection must take training, qualifications and driving licences into account, and some equipment shared between services must be scheduled to avoid overlaps.
The goal was not to digitise individual activities, but to create a single management system linking operational planning, staff, vehicles and administration. From the outset the project included an integrated system covering administration and finance, logistics, service planning and scheduling, staff, attendance and HR.
Key challenges
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01
Complex staff and vehicle planning
Each service needs a specific combination of operators, vehicles and equipment, taking into account availability, absences, skills, qualifications and overlaps between activities.
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02
Unexpected events to handle quickly
Last-minute absences, breakdowns, delays or unfinished activities require staff and vehicles to be replaced, start times to be moved and recovery jobs to be generated.
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03
Very different frequencies and methods
Daily, weekly, seasonal or multi-week services, with the need to automatically identify those that are scheduled but still lack the required resources.
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04
A varied vehicle fleet
Vehicles of different types, each with its own status, features, documents and constraints: the organisation needs to know which are available and suitable for a service, and to manage maintenance, leasing and rentals.
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05
Vehicle deadlines and compliance
Inspections, road tax, insurance, limited traffic zone permits, leasing and rental contracts and registration with the national waste register must be tracked together with each vehicle’s documents.
The solution
Labinf Sistemi developed and configured EcoGest, the integrated ERP solution for companies and cooperatives in ecological and environmental services, which connects management and operations: service planning, staff and vehicle availability, jobs and administrative processes in a single ecosystem.
The project activated a cloud-based iDempiere ERP environment and a dedicated Staff Management and Planning environment, both of which went live on 1 July 2024.
The solution includes
- Service master data and configuration
- Daily, weekly and monthly planning
- Staff, team and vehicle assignment
- Resource availability and incompatibilities
- Routes and work locations
- Recurring and on-demand services
- Recovery of unfinished activities
- On-call duty and compensatory shifts
- Absences and replacements
- Vehicle fleet register
- Maintenance and breakdowns
- Vehicle and contract deadlines
- Leasing, rental and vehicle documents
- Attendance and electronic timecard
- HR, training and skills
- Administration, management control and budgets
The planning module starts from customer contracts or orders, defines activities, locations and routes, and schedules teams, shifts, vehicles and staffing on a monthly, weekly or daily basis, comparing budget and actuals for each contract.
The fleet within planning
For each vehicle the system manages technical features, status, ownership, compatible service type, registration with the national waste register, mileage and documentation. For leased or rented vehicles it also tracks contracts, deadlines, instalments and mileage or usage-hour limits.
A project that keeps growing
A practical example is the handling of theoretical schedules: when an operator’s assignment or time on a service is changed, the system recalculates the related schedules, making shift changes and operational variations easier to manage.
After go-live, optimisation work continued on planning, display options, extraordinary services and resource management.
The benefits
- Service planning centralised in a single system
- Better visibility of staff and vehicle availability
- Resources assigned consistently with each service
- Faster handling of absences and breakdowns
- Greater control over completed and unfinished services
- Less fragmentation between operational and administrative data
- Structured management of fleet, maintenance and deadlines
- Costs tracked by service and contract
- Planning linked to staff and attendance recording
Shared data available to authorised users, with a greater ability to adapt to unexpected operational events.
In short
With EcoGest the organisation has built a single digital environment linking service planning, staff, vehicles and administrative processes, with a complete view of the resources deployed across the territory.
