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As your business relies on a fleet of vehicles to meet the demands of customers, providing a good quality service is important and needs to be maintained or improved. Looking at how you currently manage your fleet is one step to improving it.
Here is our ultimate guide to improving your fleet management.
Aim for Safer Driving
Accidents and misuse of vehicles lead to a poor reputation for your business. They also increase liability if a driver is at fault, and reduce the number of vehicles available if they have to go in for repair, or worse, written off. It is vital to ensure your fleet and drivers are operating daily activities safely. Promoting safer driving tips include:
- Providing feedback to drivers on their driving ability, especially after an incident such as speeding or parking fines and accidents.
- Implementing a strict policy on driver standards. Not tolerating substance abuse, use of phones whilst driving, verbal abuse, and road incidents that may cause upset in the field.
- Using telematics data points such as braking and acceleration information to determine the safety of drivers whilst on the road.
- Limiting the amount of jobs drivers have to do in a given day. If drivers do not feel rushed it reduces the risk of speeding and accidents during duty.
- Set up notifications when a driver exceeds a speed limit. Use Geofencing to limit where a vehicle can drive, alerting fleet management when the vehicle leaves a restricted area.
Improve Routes
Having an optimised route is essential in saving costs and improving time management. Setting up an automated route optimiser saves manually mapping out the most efficient route and saves your organisation money.
Having routes autonomously optimised means that fleet managers can focus on other cost-saving initiatives or income-generating tasks. It also reduces the amount of time a vehicle is stationary and idling.
Monitor Fleets on the Go
Allowing more options for fleet monitoring gives you many advantages. Utilising software on a mobile app will go a long way to saving costs and improving productivity too. Getting instant notifications and an easy interface will allow fleet managers to respond to issues and data quickly.
Items such as last-minute route changes can be responded to quickly and actioned accordingly. Drivers who access the app can schedule their calendars and be informed on the next tasks as well as use an integrated navigation app. Users can have the ability to upload delivery documents including images, signatures, sound recordings and location data for more accurate work completion.
Offer Customers ETA Data
Customers like to be informed in today’s on-demand world. Keeping them satisfied by introducing a feature that tracks a driver's vehicle gives them more information on the whereabouts of the product or service.
Using GPS and route planning programs, real-time location data is accessible for third-party software to use and alert clients on the status of their delivery.
Harness Available Data
Fleet management software has a lot of existing information. This can be used for analysing the ways to improve your operations. Having a bespoke dashboard that works with your business will show you areas that could be improved. Also, any gaps in a driver's time where they may go outside the permitted route can be analysed for improvements, to run a more organised operation.
With a higher number of vehicles within a fleet, cutting a few km per day from them can save a lot on fuel usage, time and distance covered which affects maintenance schedules too.
Cutting Costs by Being Fuel Efficient
As the cost of fuel is fluctuating more than ever. Affected by the crisis in Eastern Europe, sanctions and availability, fuel usage must be monitored closely to ensure that the fleets are operating efficiently. Telematics devices send vehicle information over the air to central fleet managers who can offer improvements in fuel usage to their drivers. A 10% fuel saving across all vehicles will add up a lot over a year, more than covering the cost of a fleet management solution.
With AdBlue forming part of modern diesel engines, harmful emissions are reduced by up to 95%. The AdBlue level must be monitored remotely to avoid harmful gasses being emitted from a company fleet. The recommended top-up of AdBlue at least every 8,000km will ensure the optimum efficiency of the diesel engine and reduce the risk of downtime for a fleet vehicle. You do not want one of your vehicles running out of AdBlue whilst out in the field!
Long Idle times can cost a business thousands over a year (especially if you are operating a big fleet). When stationary, unnecessary idling happens all the time. For example, when operating heating or air conditioning, defrosting glass, or whilst taking calls. The worse part is that vehicles double their emissions output when idling whilst wasting unnecessary fuel. It is therefore essential that idle time is reduced for environmental reasons too.
Consider Electric
Many governments across the world are banning combustion vehicle sales by 2035 (or sooner). This may seem difficult for fleets to transition to electric by this deadline, but it can save you a ton on fuel and maintenance costs. The sooner the switch, the more you save. Plus, not switching could cost you heavily, as some vehicles are penalised for entering zero-emissions zones in cities - this adds up quickly when you are delivering goods, or need to operate in city centres.
It also shows that your business is environmentally conscious. By switching to EVs, you are helping the reduction in emissions whilst saving on costs. EVs open up a lot of data points that can be monitored by fleet managers. As modern EVs are filled with the latest efficient battery monitoring systems, self-driving tech and entertainment features make them exceptionally good to drive too!
At High Mobility, we have the ultimate API solution to onboard your fleet of vehicles. Using native vehicle hardware installed by car manufacturers, telematics modules transfer data to our customer's fleet management solution. Using mobile data networks, we securely send vehicle data remotely. Plus, our partnered brands all sign one data agreement, making it ideal for your fleet that has multiple vehicle types and brands.
Sign up today and try our simulator, you can test out our interface right on the web browser. You only pay when you are ready to connect your fleet to your very own fleet management platform too.
