Streamlined for success
Fleets need to maximise efficiency, minimise costs and embrace new technologies in order to improve performance. Industry experts offer some advice on how best to achieve these goals
Paul McCorkell
director of business rental UK & Ireland at Enterprise
Fleets targeting the best performance are now enshrining flexibility at the heart of their mobility strategies, as hybrid working becomes the new normal. Consulting with employees ahead of any changes to the travel policy delivers better results in terms of driving efficiencies and reducing emissions. To this end, capturing data enables businesses to plan where employees are most likely to require specific types of vehicles and for how long. The same result can be achieved when engaging with employees for feedback on existing mobility options such as pool cars, which are often not used as efficiently as they could be.
These measures will help fleets identify efficiencies while ensuring employees have access to the right vehicle, when and where it’s required. Meanwhile, technology and telematics are already helping businesses deploy the right vehicle for each trip. Journey planning can also minimise carbon emissions by helping employees to assess if the trip is absolutely necessary, whether multiple stops can be made on a separate, longer journey, or if there is scope for ride sharing.
Platforms such as Enterprise Travel Direct (ETD) ensure strict compliance to travel policies while giving employees more choice when they book a vehicle, ensuring they make the best-informed decision. It also provides the opportunity for data capture on ad hoc business travel and can be backed up with plug-in telematics devices to capture actual journey data.
While it’s certainly possible to pick up and deliver a vehicle anywhere in the UK, the cost in terms of additional delivery miles and emissions can quickly mount up if a branch isn’t close to the driver, so widespread network coverage and location is key.
Enrolling employees to a car club where they can pick up a vehicle close to where they live or work can be ideal for businesses wanting a more flexible alternative to pool cars, or an opportunity to introduce and trial EVs.
As working practices evolve, nudging colleagues towards the best, flexible options simply makes business sense.
Damian Penney
vice president EMEA, Lytx
Fleet technology is no longer about simply tracking vehicles or monitoring fuel – but providing accurate insights that are going to help them become efficient, more productive and safer. Risky driving behaviours exact a tremendous toll on reputation, profits and lives every year. As such, any technology being introduced should provide fleets with proactive insights – not just reactive data.
Next-generation video telematics technology is revolutionising fleet management and helping to streamline operations, gain greater visibility and dramatically reduce risk.
Driver-centric solutions powered by machine vision and artificial intelligence (MV+AI) technologies can proactively identify risky behaviours – such as mobile phone usage, drowsiness or driving without a seatbelt – notifying the driver directly and giving them the opportunity to self-correct before a potential incident occurs.
AI empowers drivers to react and manage risk on the road through in-cab alerts, which can spot if a vehicle fails to stop at a junction, is weaving within their lane, or is following another vehicle too closely.
This is a huge step forward from traditional telematics technology, which is reactive and only provides data relating to incidents that have already happened, without any insight into what might have led to them. A driver might be steering with their knees, using a mobile phone held between shoulder and ear, eating a sandwich and smoking… and a fleet manager would never know, until it was too late.
These solutions are being championed by insurance companies as a way of helping to lower insurance premiums, reduce repairs and improve driver wellbeing. These efficiency and productivity gains often lead to sustainability gains too – so their potential value cannot be understated.
Barney Goffer
UK product manager, Teletrac Navman
While advances in technology and cloud-based solutions can help fleets become more streamlined, safer and more sustainable, digitally transforming operations means nothing without the wellbeing and empowerment of the workforce also being considered.
As a starting point: fleet fitness is absolutely connected to fleet managers’ and drivers’ wellbeing – if people feel empowered through data and visibility and feel safer in their position, this will undoubtedly have an impact on the ability of an organisation to improve efficiencies and minimise costs.
Many fleet managers are limited by the solutions they have available, or the ones they don’t have. New technology, particularly AI-based, is great at simplifying previously complex tasks, empowering fleet managers and freeing them up to be able to look at the bigger picture and use their time wisely and more efficiently.
While costs and maximising efficiency are top of fleet managers’ agendas, driver wellbeing is just as important if not more, as the industry is still short on drivers. What some may not realise is that a comprehensive driver training programme combined with a good benefits package can firstly really improve driver performance and retention, but secondly have a major bearing on wider business costs and efficiencies as seen in recent research.
A top-performing driver uses the vehicle correctly, causes less maintenance, use less fuel, avoids costly collisions, and delivers on time.
Looking at the bigger picture, technology is playing an important role in fleet efficiency in more ways than one might imagine. As technology continues to advance – and businesses look for ways to gain competitive advantage – fleet management software has become essential for any business that relies on the mobilisation of vehicles and equipment for daily operations.
No matter the size of the fleet, managers need to be across a lot of data to have the optimal process nailed. As the sector becomes increasingly digitised, fleet decision-makers are being overwhelmed with data, which, if not analysed properly, will see opportunities for efficiencies missed.
This is where fleet management software comes in to simplify the complex. If integrated properly – and potentially with other enterprise software – fleet management software can collect myriad data points, enabling businesses to boost efficiency and bring costs down by effectively and efficiently acting on key priorities such as route planning, resource management, vehicle, fuel management and maintenance.
