5 Signs Indicating the Need for a Fleet Management System
The introduction of fleet management systems had a massive impact on the transportation business. With innovative features like GPS tracking, the managers have the luxury of knowing the vehicles’ location all the time. The reporting helps gauge the performance of employees, including drivers, technicians, and managers.
Not all businesses use management solutions to run their operations. Some do not consider an actual need for it, while others do not want to spend money. However, few indicators show that your business requires management software. We will discuss them in detail in this blog.
Excessive Fuel Consumption:
When a fleet consumes a lot of fuel, it puts a burden on the business. It is a big challenge for managers to control fuel consumption. If you think that your vehicles are eating up more fuel than expected, it is time to look for a monitoring solution. You can either calculate the consumption through fueling expense or record the daily consumption through monitoring sensors.
Rash driving during trips is one of the most common reasons for excessive consumption. When the drivers adopt careless behavior like speeding, sudden braking, etc., the vehicle eats up more fuel. In addition to that, leaks also cause a considerable drop in fuel levels. It would help if you asked your technicians or drivers to closely monitor the fuel levels daily and report in case of excessive usage.
Vehicle tracking systems help reduce fuel consumption. They monitor the drivers’ behavior during trips, including their idling time and fuel-efficiency. The tracking device also has sensors that detect any leaks preventing the wastage of fuel.
Read Also: 5 Healthy Habits for Commercial Drivers
Increasing Maintenance Cost
Maintenance cost is always a big worry for managers. The increase in it means a lesser margin of profit for the business. Whether you have an in-house maintenance team or an outsourced one, the service and repair costs can go out of hand. Usually, overdue maintenance causes bigger problems in automobiles resulting in a high expense. If you face such issues, you need a mechanism to help you maintain your vehicles effectively.
The fleet management systems help you plan out all the maintenance tasks. You can organize the tasks in priority order with the execution date and time. It will help you keep track of the repairs needed for every individual vehicle. You can also set notification alerts for different maintenance tasks to do them on time. All of this helps in keeping the vehicles in decent condition resulting in lesser maintenance.
Dropping Performance of Drivers:
Are your drivers always arriving late at the destination? Are they consuming too much fuel? If your answer to these questions is ‘Yes,’ you should enhance your drivers’ accountability. It can be done by deploying an efficient monitoring mechanism. The modern vehicle tracking systems keep the drivers under surveillance all the time. From daily attendance and work shift timings to fuel-efficiency during driving, the managers can monitor everything.
The vehicle tracking solutions also help keep track of the daily performance. Managers can view the number of trips completed by a driver in a day. They can also view the duration taken during every trip.
Growing Workload on Fleet Manager:
Managers are the backbone of routine fleet operations. Every task has to run through them before completion. There is a massive pressure of work on them as they have to look after multiple tasks at a time. Due to such an enormous workload, there is always a probability of personal mistakes leading to more significant operational issues. Therefore, an efficient platform like a fleet management system can help take over most managerial jobs.
The modern management solutions perform many tasks, including reporting, staff management, schedule maintenance, financial management, etc. It takes a lot of workload off the managers, making it convenient for them to monitor operations.
Read Also: How Telematics Is Helping Fleet Management Systems
Difficulty in Data Management:
The fleet operations involve a lot of data. You have to keep a record of everything from vehicle acquisition and dispatching details to vehicles’ location during trips. It isn’t easy to manually organize and store all the data. There is always a chance of misplacing essential documents that can cause a lot of problems. Thus the absence of an efficient database affects the overall operations. Therefore, a manager should have a management solution to preserve the useful data.
With a platform to organize data, the managers can retrieve records instantly. It also helps create reports for analyzing performance. When the decisions are taken based on accurate data, there is a likelihood of achieving better efficiency and productivity.
The management solution is the need of every fleet business for improving efficiency and productivity. However, sometimes it becomes essential for the survival of a business. If your business is showing the signs mentioned above, hire a fleet management system.
