Tablets speed up vehicle inspections in Finland
Pinja, a Finnish information system supplier, launched the Muster vehicle inspection system this spring. Since then the system, which runs on any mobile and tablet device, has considerably speeded up vehicle inspection procedures. Thanks to agreements with two large vehicle inspection chains, Pinja became Finland’s leading supplier of vehicle inspection systems.
Pinja’s Muster vehicle inspection system, which runs on mobile devices and tablets, has received a very warm welcome from Finnish vehicle inspection stations. Inspection results are entered directly in a tablet computer and the inspection report is printed out immediately for the customer. The Muster vehicle inspection system not only accelerates inspection procedures, but also includes electronic booking and a cash register and invoicing system. In the future, inspection station offices hardly need paper any longer. The software is offered as a cloud-based service and the one-off investment is very low to the vehicle inspection service provider.
The Muster system is already widely used in many Finnish companies that are members of the Association of Private Inspection Stations (Yksityisten Katsastustoimipaikkojen liitto). Now, one of the world’s biggest operators in the vehicle inspection industry, the Spanish-owned Applus, has also selected Pinja’s system for all of its Finnish K1 inspection stations. In total, there are approximately 335 vehicle inspection stations in Finland today, of which Pinja has gained 50% market share in less than six months.
“We know that potential for growth exists. In addition to the Finnish market, we will investigate international market opportunities in the Nordic countries and Central Europe, for example. We are also interested in market areas in the developing countries”, said Olli Porkholm.
The basic idea of Muster is to improve the cost efficiency of vehicle inspection stations. For example, data obtained from vehicle inspection equipment, such as exhaust analysers and brake dynamometers, are automatically stored in the service provider’s servers. From the beginning, Muster was developed by paying close attention to customer feedback and by using modern, Agile software development methods.
“Pinja has a great design team, which includes several vehicle inspection professionals. They have been able to create software that is extremely functional immediately in the first deployment. I am very positively surprised by the experience. We have inspectors who have no earlier experience of touchscreen monitors, but even they can easily enter figures in tablet computers, which is an obvious indication of the intuitive software design”, relates Jarno Viinikainen, a vehicle inspection entrepreneur from the inspection company Meidän Katsastus Oy.
According to Pinja, the new type of vehicle inspection system is very responsive and easily adaptable to changes taking place in the industry. For example, a change to the vehicle inspection legislation entering in force in July in Finland also enables car repair shops to carry out vehicle inspections in the future. This has not been possible in Finland earlier. Tougher competition has increased the need for the existing vehicle inspection stations to upgrade their ERP systems.
Further information
Olli Porkholm
+358 10 347 2710
olli.porkholm@pinja.com
