Unlocking Better Business Decisions With Data

Making use of data tools that provide information on your fleet, such as vehicle mileage, fuel costs, driver behaviour and ETA's, can allow you to make solid business decisions and optimise the performance of your fleet.

In this post, we take a look at what fleet metrics a business should analyse to enable them to make the right decisions that help reduce costs, improve driver safety and improve customer satisfaction.

Reduce Costs

One of the biggest financial strains on company vehicles is the wear and tear they incur. Keeping up to date with the maintenance needs of a fleet and ensuring that vehicles are not over or under-serviced is vital to keeping costs down. Potential problems, such as engine faults, are difficult to spot between regularly scheduled maintenance.

That's why keeping an online maintenance history report helps cut the problem of lost or inaccurate paperwork and the data provided can give management a far better oversight of which vehicles may need action.

With the right fleet management system, you can streamline maintenance processes and procedures and make maintenance decisions based on facts and not guesswork

But a great deal of maintenance expenditure could be avoided if vehicles are driven only within working hours and in the correct manner. Identifying problem drivers is just as important as identifying problem vehicles.

Data provided by vehicle tracking about the performance of staff behind the wheel gives management the ability to analyse an individual driver's performance against business goals.

It's not uncommon for fleet owners to suspect that the engines of their vehicles are being left on when their drivers reach a site. Engine idling costs UK businesses vast sums of money but with access to the right data, fleet owners can cut vehicle idle time by 25 percent, saving lots of cash in return.

Having the ability to make sure overtime claims are correct can also have an impact on budgets and cash flow. Being able to effectively track these costs can help an organisation avoid preventable expenses which saves money and keeps the budget on track. Simply put, using reports and real-time data allows operators to gain more visibility of their fleet.

Improve Safety

Keeping a fleet legally complaint can often feel like an uphill battle. Drivers and vehicles may be miles away at any given time, but the responsibility for them stays with the company. Without any form of data, operators are unable to accurately monitor how long drivers have been on the road for, how often they take a break or when it's next due. Calculating precise working hours and the having the ability to provide this data is useful in helping to remain compliant with the Working Time Directive.

Failing to comply with legislation such as the Health and Safety at Work Act, the Corporate Manslaughter Act or the Road Traffic Act of 1988 can lead to heavy fines, loss of operator licence or imprisonment.

We were told about the experience of Dave Ashford at KBC Logistics who had a staff member who had been disqualified from driving, but because of the timing of his internal checking procedures, he was unaware of the situation and the driver was still being deployed.

The company had run internal checks on all drivers, but because there was no instant alert system in place, the company was unaware that, since the last check, the driver in question had since lost his licence.

On June 9th, whilst driving his own car (out of working hours), the driver was involved in a collision with a motorcyclist who unfortunately died at the scene.

Dave could have been liable for allowing his driver to continue working for him, but on this occasion, he could prove he had no knowledge of the ban and had thankfully fulfilled his business obligations.

Establishing individual driver performance and how your vehicles are being driven, has a substantial impact on an organisation in terms of reducing costs such as fuel expenditure, insurance and wear and tear, whilst improving areas such like environmental responsibility and duty of care.

Introducing driver training programmes and courses to help identify opportunities to correct bad driving habits, will also reduce the risk of collisions and, help make all road users safer.

Improving Service to Customers

Some companies are using data to boost customer approval. By supplying data to customer facing applications, which allow customers to track a specific product they've ordered throughout the delivery process, businesses have opened up a whole new level of service. That data can leverage valuable metrics, such as how far away their average customer lives, how much they spend, and what time of day they're available to contact.

Answering customer queries with ease and problem-solving complaints can be tricky, however having vehicle location data at your fingertips will help achieve this. Being able to identify the location of the vehicle in question, how long they will be and providing an ETA with give customers' assurance they can rely on your business. Even notifying customers ahead of scheduled delivery time of a potentially late arrival and identifying your nearest vehicle for an urgent job, will no doubt improve your reputation.