Fleet management has never been a simple process. As a fleet manager, optimising each fleet vehicle’s performance piles up and eventually improves the entirety of your fleet operations, resulting in less fuel usage, decreased maintenance costs and higher profit margins for your business. How does exactly a fleet management software help you do that?
Decrease Fuel Costs with Real-Time Fleet Tracking
One of the essential elements key to increase profitability in any fleet is the idea to decrease fuel cost. In case the operator is using the fuel card wrongly some potential losses might occur. Sometimes drivers tend to make mistakes like filling up their personal vehicles with the company fuel card.
Some complex fleet management solutions offer to track fuel usage of each and every company vehicle. Moreover, you will be informed at the exact fuel consumption and where your fuel cards were used, the exact amount of fuel and whether the overall fuel efficiency of your fleet is suffering. Of course, the operating costs that you can decrease are greatly dependent on your fleet size.
Fleet Management Solutions Boost Fleet Productivity
Sometimes drivers log in different hours for their vehicle usage. Rarely they log in less time and it is much more common to see someone logging longer hours than actually driven. Having to pay for wages that are not earned might drive any business into unwanted indirect costs.
Some Fleet management solutions offer a digitalised logbook that you can take advantage of which uses certain telematics for an accurate vehicle tracking process and logs in the hours driven accordingly.
Moreover, you will be able to see exactly how many hours the driver spent and the exact location he had more downtime. A GPS fleet has the advantage to cut bottom-line expenses like fuel cost, and unnecessary vehicle usage due to wasteful route planning.
Why is Vehicle Tracking Essential for Fleet Management?
Giving fleet managers in-depth knowledge on the location of separate company vehicles can be achieved by GPS tracking. Tracking a vehicle to its exact location can give numerous benefits. It allows the fleet manager to study routing mistakes and certain driving habits that might tone down fleet productivity, such as downtime and aggressive driving that promotes higher fuel consumption.
Moreover, knowing the exact location thanks to vehicle telematics can provide some security against theft. Vehicle tracking systems are held in high regard by insurance companies and give you the edge to achieve a good level of cost reduction for their fees.
Some advanced telematics can show, for example, if a driver has taken a lunch break and is keeping the A/C turned on, with an idling vehicle. Costs pile up. Another relevant example is if someone takes a detour and goes to attend personal obligations while logging work hours. A good fleet management software can track that and alert you right away.
GPS Fleet tracking is a functionality that allows you to monitor driving behavior closely. Bad driving habits such as harsh braking, unnecessary acceleration, idling, and gives you more efficient routes to direct your drivers toward. Driver safety is another concern many fleet managers neglect and do not realise that it is directly connected to fuel savings because the same practices affect both.
The lifecycle of your company vehicles depends on proper vehicle maintenance. Successful fleet managers know how much a fleet tracking software facilitates setting proper mileage between putting a vehicle through maintenance. The idea behind that is if you overdo maintenance, fleet costs would rise up, and if you do not do it as often as needed, the same thing would happen on an even higher level due to some vehicles breaking and needing excessive downtime until they are repaired and back on the road. Therefore, good middle ground must be found.
Decrease Fleet Costs With Routing Optimisation
Intelligent telematics solutions allow you to know the exact vehicle location of every single unit in your fleet. Sometimes drivers make wrong turns, ending up in missing delivery times, wasting fuel or depreciating company vehicles at a higher rate. It is much easier for GPS fleets to manage driver behavior.
Efficient routes are a key element to cost-reduction and smart fleet management solutions allow for all drivers to be notified of the most optimal routing to reach their designated destinations.
Moreover, using a complex fleet tracking ensures that your business is in compliance with the Australian Law at all times. Such systems allow for speed limits to be set to company vehicles. Aside from that geofencing can be placed in case some driver is restricted to operate out of a certain area.
Other Ways To Decrease Fleet Costs and Increase profitability
Aside from all the data telematics and vehicle tracking software can give you, always listen to your customers. Sometimes you are losing clients due to some other reason that intelligent technologies are not yet advanced enough to point out. Happy customers always tend to help our business grow by promoting it through making mouth to mouth recommendations to close friends or colleagues.
If old company vehicles maintenance takes a large portion of your fleet costs, consider switching to newer hybrid generation vehicles that are not as maintenance hungry and allow for much lower fuel usage.
Aside from that, if you have had company vehicles stolen before, installing anti-theft devices can help get rid of that possibility and at the very least they would lower insurance premiums on most vehicles in the long run.
Regardless of whether you want to use fleet management software to track driving behavior, or strive for fleet optimisation, it is never a bad investment for a large scale business that relies on reducing the operating costs and the total cost of ownership for each vehicle.
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