CERTRACK

The Business Case

CerTrack was designed for use by South African vehicle financing institutions (i.e. banks), and enables these institutions to keep effective control of their vehicle registration certificates while also complying with the requirements of the National Road Traffic Act (Act 93 of 1996), and allowing for interaction between branches, dealers and clients.

For each vehicle finance contract, the financing institution has to safeguard the vehicle registration certificate, which serves as proof that it is the title holder. With regard to the Road Traffic Act, the person holding this certificate has all the rights provided in the act, irrespective of the name/identification on the certificate.

The safekeeping of this large amount of high-value certificates that must be stored for between twelve and sixty months and then need to be retrieved immediately when needed, can prove to be problematic for the following reasons, among others:

  • Certificates cannot be located when required as they are missing or misplaced.

  • Proper records are not kept of certificates issued temporarily for the purpose of changing the vehicle and/or owner information.

  • Obtaining a replacement certificate is a tedious, time consuming, expensive process as the registering authorities regard the loss of an original certificate as negligence on the part of the title holder that creates unnecessary additional pressure on their already limited resources, and they are to increase the fee for this dramatically in the near future.

  • Requests for replacement certificates are sometimes made multiple times because the first such request is not tracked. In cases where multiple requests are made and multiple replacement certificates are issued, all such certificates except the latest are invalid.

  • Long waiting periods for outstanding certificates frustrate customers and dealers.


Ubiquitech’s Solution

CerTrack is a scalable, reliable and secure web-based solution that enables any number of authorised users to process certificates, and requests for certificates, simultaneously. All that is required by each user is a PC with a web browser and an Internet connection, plus a barcode scanner capable of scanning the two-dimensional barcodes that are printed on all NaTIS certificates.

CerTrack handles the following aspects of managing the NaTIS certificates:

  • Logging user requests for the release of certificates linked to paid-up finance contracts, and tracking these requests through a predetermined approval process. This has been implemented as a call-centre function in which the logged-on user can handle a call from a member of the public, and can confirm that the relevant account is paid up.

  • Receiving and recording notifications of certificates that are awaiting receipt from dealers.

  • Barcode-scanning received certificates, and matching them against records of awaited certificates.

  • Automatically allocating a filing location for each received certificate, and printing the location in bar-coded form on the back of the certificate.

  • Recording detailed audit trails of all actions affecting each NaTIS certificate.

  • Logging user requests for the temporary release of certificates for changes to vehicle and/or owner details, tracking these requests through a predetermined approval process and keeping record of lead times for the returning certificates.

  • Generating SMS and/or email notifications to appropriate stakeholders, regarding the progress of each certificate through the approval/release/dispatch process.

  • Generating a picking list from approved release-requests.

  • Generating and printing fully completed official Notification of Change of Ownership (NCO) forms (to be delivered to the customer together with the NaTIS certificate, in compliance with the Road Traffic Act).

  • Automatically notifying courier services about documents awaiting dispatch.

  • Receiving and recording notifications of collection and delivery from courier and/or mail services.

  • Generating and printing fully completed official application forms for replacement certificates, in cases where certificates are found to be missing.

  • Tracking of applications for replacement certificates, to ensure that certificates are not requested more than once.

  • Querying eNaTIS via an online interface, to confirm the validity of certificates held in storage.

  • Generating and displaying management information reports.