Your fleet is at the heart of your business.
And whilst every business has several operational elements that require a lot of time, energy and organisation, for businesses that operate a fleet of vehicles, these elements can often be more complex than others.
As your fleet operations grow, no matter what size your business is, it can become increasingly challenging to juggle all the tasks needed to effectively manage your fleet.
Over the past couple of years, we have witnessed a significant increase in the need for enhanced remote communication and collaboration and as such, digitising traditional manual admin tasks and ensuring all teams are communicating effectively is now becoming an integral part of every business across any sector.
That’s where fleet management technology comes into play.
Implementing a centralised fleet management platform can not only help increase your fleet’s efficiency and performance but can also simultaneously help improve the safety of your vehicles and drivers.
What is a fleet management system?
A fleet management system is fast becoming an essential tool for many businesses with its main goals of improving the efficiency and productivity of your fleet as well as improving vehicle safety and driver performance from one place.
Through a centralised platform, you can gain complete visibility across your operations in real-time with access to all your data in a single location allowing you to make more informed business decisions.
What are the benefits of going digital?
With a fleet management system packed with modern technology, it’s never been easier to automate daily tasks and monitor your fleet’s performance across a number of key areas:
1. Streamlining maintenance workflows
One of the key benefits of fleet management software is the ability to improve your maintenance process electronically rather than manually. Through real-time updates, you can track all your fleet maintenance, repairs, productivity and scheduling all in a single, centralised system leading to reduced vehicle downtime and increased efficiency.
2. Enhanced communication
Communication between teams in the field and office can often be challenging and inefficient. Implementing a fleet management software system can act as a central hub for collaboration, allowing you to manage all aspects of your fleet communications through a centralised, transparent system.
Connected teams can quickly and easily resolve issues, send messages and images in real-time, keep customers informed and ensure communications are documented in a single place.
3. Real-time data & insights
Each of your vehicles and drivers generates a whole range of data every day.
With advanced analytics in place through a fleet management system, more and more sources of data can be pulled together and used to deliver better insights and recommendations around driver behaviour, location and accident tracking, vehicle maintenance and performance information all in real-time.
This data can then be used to both streamline and simplify day-to-day activities, helping make fleets safer, smarter and more productive.
4. Automated reports
Eliminating the need for time-consuming data entry, now with the help of information collected through vehicle GPS tracking systems and built-in reporting dashboards as well as traditional general vehicle maintenance and expenses, a fleet management system automatically generates a variety of reports on vehicle maintenance, driver performance, incident reporting and repair status, fuel expenditure…...
These reports can easily be integrated and customised to allow for complete visibility over certain areas of fleet operations and provide a greater understanding of overall performance, productivity and service to build a more efficient fleet.
5. Improved vehicle efficiency
Increased efficiency is one of the biggest benefits of a fleet management solution as it allows you to track fleet data in real-time. Using detailed reports, fleet managers can turn data into actionable information to share with other team members and offer them complete visibility and understanding of where improvements can be made, helping to streamline processes.
By enabling communication, eliminating manual data entry and automating workflows, a fleet management system helps keep your fleet efficient at all times.
6. Driver & fleet safety
The majority of road traffic accidents are attributed to unsafe and poor driving techniques. These can be hugely costly to fleets across vehicle repairs, insurance, fines, and more importantly, the safety of drivers, passengers or pedestrians involved.
For this reason, driver behaviour is one of the key focuses of a fleet management system. The technology used within the fleet software allows for the monitoring of speeding, harsh braking as well as analysing regular patterns and behaviour of individual drivers through real-time alerts and notifications. In many cases, poor driving habits reduce a fleet’s life span, however by keeping track of their drivers, businesses can more easily monitor and make more informed decisions about improving driver behaviour and fleet safety while reducing vehicle maintenance and fuel consumption.
7. Automated vehicle maintenance
One of the biggest challenges that fleet managers face is tracking and maintaining their fleet of vehicles from a centralised place.
Fleet management software allows complete visibility over a range of maintenance data including breakdowns, repairs, mileage, engine hours and planned services with automated reminders and notification alerts for services and repairs.
Using and analysing this data can help identify problem areas enabling fleet managers to plan and devise customised preventative maintenance schedules to avoid unnecessary vehicle downtime.
8. Customer satisfaction
With real-time visibility, drivers and office-based teams can easily communicate and share data regarding traffic and transit delays and in turn, customers can benefit from improved ETA accuracy through GPS tracking data.
Furthermore, bookings can be simplified using set appointment reminders and alerts on driver delays in order to prioritise customer appointments.
The future of fleet management
In an increasingly digitised world, fleet management technology is fast becoming an invaluable tool in helping businesses streamline their operations.
Take a look at the benefits for yourself. Find out how the Prolius Fleet management system can improve your fleet’s performance and overall productivity; schedule a demo and see how you can simplify your processes today.