According to a recent article in Commercial Fleet the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) believes the Earned Recognition scheme could set the standard and become the benchmark for operator compliance. Other schemes exist today and have been around for a while but these tend to have a regional or market sector focus, whereas Earned Recognition is national and applies to everyone. It has the added benefit of a direct link to the authority responsible for national vehicle and driving standards. Earned Recognition went live earlier in the year at the Commercial Vehicle Show after a 12-month pilot involving more than 60 operators running more than 43,000 vehicles. Descartes participated in the pilot as an approved provider of Earned Recognition KPIs. Under the scheme operators sharing their compliance KPIs are less likely to be stopped for roadside inspections by the DVSA leaving the authorities with more resources to tackle serially and seriously non-compliant operators. The scheme rewards the operators focused on ensuring their vehicles and drivers are safe. In order to gain that valuable Earned Recognition accreditation operators will need to pass a compliance audit and provide a set of key performance indicators (KPIs). They must have IT systems for vehicle maintenance and drivers’ hours to provide KPIs. Descartes Smartanalysis has the KPI reports available for drivers’ hours and operators can sign-up to Smartanalysis for 25p per driver per day or £48 per annum. Operators with Earned Recognition will have a significant competitive advantage when bidding for new contracts. It sends a clear message about how the operator is run and the operator is less likely to impacted by delays incurred due to roadside inspections. Registration-plate recognition (ANPR) makes it very easy for the DVSA in targeting operators that are not part of the scheme as it tells examiners whether or not an operator is on it. The DVSA is looking to grow the number of operators participating in the scheme from 4% to day to 10% by the end of the year. Operators wanting to get automated reports and emailed SmartAlerts on their drivers’ hours compliance can do so with Descartes Smartanalysis and when they are ready to look at Earned Recognition they can take advantage of the KPI reports to achieve the Earned Recognition accreditation.