A lot of companies nowadays have their fleet of vehicles that they use to deliver orders for customers. They schedule the deliveries and send them to the customers based on different factors like geographical location, order numbers, order size, and other things. What happens is that most of the companies are so busy with their day to day operations and running the business that they put fleet management at the back of their minds and lose one of the best ways to increase their business’s potential. They forget the dates when they have to send their vehicles to a specific area.
Sometimes they forget the maintenance dates of the vehicles, which creates a problem later on. Trucks or cars might break down in the middle of delivery or even worse, and they could get into an accident. Not only does this mean loss of profit, but it could also mean your customers are losing faith in your brand and your brand’s reputation taking a dip. These are some things that a lot of businesses never get out of and are stuck with a bad reputation.
Whether you are delivering Christmas gifts or electronic items you need to make sure that you have a sound fleet management system so that you achieve your business’s true potential and make the most out of the services that you provide.
What is Fleet Management?
The term fleet management is used for the process of managing the vehicles that a business owns to deliver the orders to the customers. These vehicles significantly increase a business’s potential as they don’t have to pay hefty amounts to third parties for their deliveries. Fleet management is an overall management system that includes vehicle tracking through GPS, monitoring the vehicles’ whereabouts, maintenance, and mechanical diagnostics through data-driven insights, as well as fuel consumption, distance covered, and everything in between. Companies gather data from their tracking systems as well as running diagnostics on the vehicles to describe everything from road safety, driver behavior, and a lot of other useful information.
Various elements in fleet management are of the utmost importance. These include, first of all, the data that is gathered from GPS. This data includes everything from location, and distance traveled, driver performance, vehicle health, among others. Once all the data has been gathered, the second step is the analysis of the data and its interpretation. This analysis helps the managers make informed decisions to improve the entire procedure.
This process helps managers gain essential insights that help them achieve their overall goals like reducing cost, improving road safety, and the most important, improving the customer’s experience with your company.
What is a translation management system?
A translation management system (TMS) is a computer software application that helps organizations manage the translation of digital content. It typically provides workflow features to help manage the entire translation process, from initial project creation to final delivery.
THE BASIC COMPONENTS OF FLEET MANAGEMENT
Various elements comprise a fleet management system. The essential components are:
Hardware
The hardware usually consists of a black device that is discretely fixed into the vehicle. It connects directly to the Engine Control Module (ECM).
Software
Where there is hardware, there has to be software to control it. So is the case with the black box in vehicles. The software gathers the data from different performance metrics. This data includes everything from engine idle time, ignition time, and driver behavior on the road, mileage, fuel consumption, and everything in between.
Management Software
It could be one prominent software that collects the data and analyzes it, or it could be two different programs running concurrently. The management software analyzes and interprets the collected data to provide company managers with meaningful, data-driven insights that they can take action on. It means that they don’t have to make decisions based on assumptions. They can make informed decisions based on hard facts and figures.
REASONS WHY YOUR COMPANY NEEDS A FLEET MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Here are 5 reasons why your company must implement a fleet management system:
1. Increased visibility
With complete insights into the entire delivery process, managers have their accounts in the order. They can access those accounts from anywhere they are, through any device that they want. They can access the system through their smartphones, tablets, or any other device. They can find out what the driver is doing, how early or late the delivery is, whether the vehicle needs maintenance or not, and other things. This way, they can take immediate action, or they can access the data from an entire month and look at the big picture.
2. Improve customer service
When you have every bit of data in front of you, you can make decisions and ensure that you achieve the objective of keeping your customers happy and satisfied. It will increase your brand loyalty as well as open the door to recommendations and referrals. It will also mean less miscommunication, decrease in delays, drivers, and orders won’t get lost, and the customer will always be in the loop.
3. Improve safety
You are not only in charge of your customer’s experience, but you also have to answer for your employee’s safety and security. With a fleet management system, you can identify the problems that might put your drivers at risk and take immediate and effective action against those problems to keep your drivers protected. It could include the timely maintenance of your vehicles, or educating your drivers about aggressive driving or harsh braking.
4. Reduce costs
Although implementing a fleet management system might seem like an expensive action, but it has long term effects that will help you with reducing the cost. For example, you will be able to reduce fuel consumption. With regular maintenance, there will be fewer accidents or break downs of the vehicles, which will mean less money spent on repairs and a decreased amount of premium for insurance. You can find out exactly how many vehicles you need to keep your system at the optimum position.
5. Greater Insight into Details
You will not be making your decisions based on assumptions and gut feelings but hard evidence-based insights and interpretations. More data means better and highly effective decisions.
Conclusion
One of the ways technology has helped us is through fleet management systems. You can implement a sound system in your company to increase overall productivity, performance while reducing your costs and keeping your employees safe. The best thing is that it will increase your customer satisfaction levels and generate more sales in return.
