Whether your company delivers products or serves customers at their homes or workplace, you rely on a fleet of commercial vehicles to keep your business running. So, optimizing your fleet management will keep those vehicles running. Fleet management includes all of the systems and processes to manage the lifecycle of your business vehicles. From inspections and maintenance to cost management, managing your fleet involves a lot of different tasks but brings excellent benefits. The goal is to ensure your fleet is compliant and running efficiently, which will also decrease costs and increase driver safety.
What Does Fleet Management Include?
Vehicle Maintenance Program
A good maintenance plan is to perform more preventive maintenance than reactive. Tracking and staying on top of vehicle maintenance is an essential part of having a safe, reliable fleet that lasts.
Fleet Analytics and Reporting
Technology provides many tools to automate your data collection and reporting. Redlist’s Field Service Management software has a reporting dashboard that auto-populates with your real-time data. This allows you to better track important metrics.
Fuel Program
From setting fuel policies to tracking purchases, managing your fuel usage can feel like an overwhelming task. Redlist’s mobile app offers an easier way for your drivers to manage fuel on the go. Also, it’s important to have a process in place to manage fuel, as fuel accounts for an average of 60% of a company’s fleet operating budget.
Driver Safety
Fleet management focuses a lot on your vehicles, but your drivers also need attention. You need to track certain training, certifications, and licenses, such as a commercial driver’s license, to ensure your drivers are compliant. Also, it is important to observe and respond to driver behavior to mitigate any potential risks.
Driver Retention and Recruiting
If your business relies on your fleet, then you have to keep enough drivers on staff to meet demand. Proper fleet management can make processes like time tracking or pre and post-trip inspections easier for your drivers. This helps their schedule stay on track and leads to higher driver satisfaction and retention.
Compliance
Managing the compliance of your fleet involves a lot of regulations, inspections, licensing, and paperwork. Using a digital solution to manage it all streamlines the process and ensures you and your drivers don’t overlook an important safety requirement.
Asset Lifecycle Management
Tracking the lifecycle of the vehicles in your fleet helps you forecast future purchases. This is an important step in budgeting and planning company growth. So, asset lifecycle management includes the sale or disposal of old assets, determining the best way to finance new asset purchases, and the acquisition and onboarding of new assets.
The Benefits of Fleet Management
Once you optimize all the pieces of your fleet management, you can begin to reap the benefits. As you can see by the list above, fleet management involves a lot of systems and processes. You can try to get by with spreadsheets or paper-based files, but that requires more manual input, data entry, and simply more time. A fleet management software digitizes and automates more of the process, which streamlines every aspect of your fleet management.
Some of the benefits of fleet management include:
- Increased Vehicle Safety and Reliability
- Improved Driver Safety
- Reduced Operational Costs
- Greater Driver Satisfaction and Retention
- Visibility and Insight into Fleet Operations
- More Efficient Fleet Operations
- Increased Customer Satisfaction (from increased reliability and efficiency, ensuring timely arrival of goods or services)
Optimize Your Fleet Management with Redlist
The Internet of Things (IoT) offers more connectivity, sensors, and automation that sends a lot of data to your fleet manager. The sheer number of hours your fleet manager needs to sort through that data and analyze it is time they don’t have. Your fleet manager has a lot on their plate. Implementing software that can integrate with sensors, auto-populate reports from your data, and streamline fleet management for your team is the best way to optimize your fleet. Your vehicles, fuel, and drivers are a very large part of your budget. So, let Redlist help you keep your business and your fleet running.
