Is Fleet Management the Right Fit for Your Business?

How do you know if fleet management is right for you? If your business has at least five or more vehicles on the road, it’s time to think about fleet management telematics. If you are thinking to yourself, “Is fleet management right for my business?” read to find out more.

Many businesses have operational challenges that require a ton of energy, time, and coordinated logistics. But for some, logistics and fleet management are more complex than others. The bigger your business gets and the more vehicles you have in your fleet, the more you should think about a fleet management solution that can keep everything running smoothly.

Companies that benefit from fleet management include transportation, freight, deliveries, field calls, repairs, landscaping, plumbing, HVAC, the gas and oil industry, construction, mining, and more. And not just big companies, even ones with as few as five vehicles can see a benefit. If your business uses vehicles, whether trucks or cars, but is not using a fleet management system, take a look at these benefits to see if fleet management is right for your business.

What Is a Fleet?

As your business grows and expands, you've probably added one or more vehicles to service your customers. Eventually, you may realize you have more than five vehicles on the road. At what point can this be considered a fleet and when do you need fleet management? While adding a vehicle here and there may not seem like much, whether you realize it or not, as your business grows, managing your vehicles will begin to take up more of your time. 

As your fleet grows, you begin to look at things differently. Unexpected breakdowns mean vehicle downtime, less work getting done and less money coming in. A couple of extra gallons of fuel used multiplied over five or more vehicles quickly adds up. It may be time to consider fleet management.

Why Use Fleet Management?

When your business depends on keeping trucks on the road and getting to their destinations on time, fleet management can keep everything running on schedule. In addition, fleet management can help control costs, improve productivity, manage fuel usage, and keep your fleet in compliance with regulations. If this seems like a big job, it is.

That’s why fleet managers often turn to a technology and software solution to keep things going. By adding fleet management telematics to the mix, you can more easily improve driver safety, reduce costs, minimize risk, and better schedule preventative maintenance to minimize downtime.

Benefits of Fleet Management

If you’re wondering what exactly is fleet management, it encompasses a lot of things. Fleet managers are tasked with optimizing costs, efficiencies, and risks of fleet operations. Fleet management can enhance the quality of a company’s service and develop efficiencies that make the service more effective.

Improved Dispatching and Routing

With GPS tracking, you will know where all the vehicles in your fleet are at all times. When you have this visibility, you can improve route planning and job scheduling. You’ll save time and be able to schedule more jobs or routes to each driver. This means you can do more work in the same amount of time, with your existing vehicles and drivers. With this increased efficiency, you can increase potential profit margins.

Customized Fleet Reports

Fleet management software can generate reports hourly, daily, or weekly, depending on how often you want to see specific data. You can customize reports to show you driver behavior, time on the job, and more. You can use this information to make adjustments in routes, hours, and driver behavior.

Improve Fleet Fuel Efficiency

Fuel is one of the highest and most unpredictable costs for your fleet. While you can’t control the price of fuel and may be at the mercy of any fluctuations, you can manage your drivers' behavior. Fleet management software lets you analyze the behavior of your drivers, see how much time they spend driving, and how often they speed, brake harshly, and other behaviors that can lead to excess fuel use. Having this information in front of you helps you make an informed decision rather than just guessing about what to do.

Improve Safety for the Fleet

While driver behaviors such as speeding, harsh braking, and hard accelerating burn more fuel, they are also very risky. These aggressive and dangerous behaviors can cause big problems for your company. The majority of accidents are caused by unsafe driving, and too many of these incidents not only puts people at risk, they can damage your company’s reputation.

Your fleet management system can help improve your drivers’ behavior in several ways. You can set automatic alerts that let the driver know, in real-time, when they are speeding or otherwise driving in an unsafe way. This gives them the chance to correct their behavior.

You can also generate a report and sort by driver, behavior, and any other filters you choose to analyze patterns, habits, and behaviors of your fleet. Then, you can use this information to make your drivers aware of how often they drive dangerously and help them improve their driving.

Enhance Driver Training

As mentioned, a fleet management system will give you insight into your drivers' behaviors. But that’s not all. It can also help you create training programs that will get real results. You rank and score your drivers, then share this information so that they know how they are doing compared to other drivers and incentivize them to improve.

Improved Insurance Premiums

Insurance is another huge cost for fleets, so anything you can do to lower the premiums will help your business. A fleet management system is one of those things. Because insurance companies know that fleet management telematics systems can help improve driving behavior and reduce accidents, they often provide incentives to companies who use a fleet management system. Check with your insurance company to see if they offer discounts based on the use of a fleet management system, implementing a safety program, and other initiatives. You may be able to pay a lower premium.

Improves Customer Experience and Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is key in all businesses. No matter whether you are delivering food or delivering a service, customers don’t like to wait. Often, they’ve taken time out of their busy days to be available during the window you’ve given them. That’s why on-time delivery and reduced or no wait times are so important. All the benefits above will culminate in better customer experience and improved customer satisfaction. You’ll be able to give your customers better, more efficient service, regardless of what type of business it is. When customers get better service, they are more likely to give you more business and to recommend you to others.

No matter what type of company you run, if you have trucks or other vehicles as part of your operations, a fleet management system can help you improve your business. From reducing accidents to improving fuel efficiency to reducing wait time, a fleet management system is key to keeping your fleet competitive.