Advantages of a Fleet Management System to Businesses

What Is Fleet Management?

Fleet management is a business approach that allows companies to coordinate company vehicles, improve efficiency, reduce costs, and comply with government regulations. A fleet management system (FMS) is a software tool that helps with all those tasks, controlling costs, managing productivity and reducing risks. 

The main benefit of fleet management systems is identifying potential issues before they cause significant problems in the future. By efficiently organising your fleet, you not only reduce unexpected expenses but will prolong the life of your vehicles. 

This article is our fleet management guide, showing key advantages when investing in an FMS.

Complications Associated With Managing A Fleet

When managing a fleet of trucks, various complications can present themselves on a daily basis. Let’s take a look at some of the main issues.

  • High Fuel Costs

  • Small fluctuations in fuel costs can have a significant impact on the company’s finances. Maintenance teams must immediately report fluctuating fuel usage.
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Digitalisation Of Vehicles

Using digital applications can help managers to access service history data and maintain compliance records. But all this information still needs to be stored and is often hard to collate.

  • Route Optimisation

For the fleet manager and the maintenance team, ensuring the quickest and safest truck routes can be very time-consuming. Roadworks, diversions and reduced speed limits can significantly affect predicting travel times, adding to the difficulty of managing fleet expenses.

  • Unpredictable Climatic Events

  • The tightening of environmental legislation means pressure to phase out the use of internal combustion engines is increasing. Fleet managers and service technicians need to be aware of these issues and formulate their own strategies to cope with a constantly evolving industry.

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  • Driver Shortages

Driver shortages have been one of the main concerns for fleet managers in recent times. Shortages can result in recruiting inexperienced drivers, leading to safety issues and the need for driver monitoring tactics. 

Overcome Fleet Complications With Fleet Management Systems

Fleet managers are often overwhelmed. Forced to balance conflicting priorities, they often turn to creative ideas to keep essential assets running. It’s easy for fleet management to be pushed down the priority list, with important investments in service and maintenance postponed. 

While understandable, this is also high-risk. Fortunately, modern fleet management systems can help keep the fleet running without sacrificing other shop-floor initiatives. Consolidating organising and planning into one central hub allows fleet managers more time to adequately address the needs of the business’s most important assets. Once again, this highlights the importance of fleet asset management for any logistics-based company.

Eight Advantages Of A Fleet Management System For Companies

1. Better Vehicle Security

Fleet management benefits include ensuring trucks are only accessible by drivers you’ve given permission. This means the system keeps your keys, which are stored so that not all are immediately available when an employee uses a vehicle. 

  • 2. Accountability And Transparency

Another fleet management advantage is accountability. Tracking who had which truck at what time brings many benefits for your business. Being able to investigate vehicle damage better and monitoring individual delivery performance stats are just two examples.

  • 3. Optimised Productivity

Your business requires having vehicles available when drivers need them. Tracking fleet management effectively allows you to better schedule use, letting you know when a vehicle’s been taken out, for how long and by who. Knowing the duration your vehicles are in use allows you to monitor schedules and plan jobs more effectively.

  • 4. Higher Customer Satisfaction

Good customer service is vital in the trucking industry, influencing your company’s image and bringing in repeat work. Effective fleet management does both, and it allows your staff to always have the right tools at hand for the job when they need them.

  • 5. All Operations In One Place

Having all your company’s data in one place helps you make more informed, fast and reasonable decisions. What’s more, fleet driver management systems are typically powered by artificial intelligence, meaning you may get even more insights for short and long-term business decisions. 

  • 6. Fuel Consumption Control

The control of fuel consumption is the first step to sustainable logistics. Fleet management advantages include alerts and updates when a particular truck is going to exceed the daily mileage limit. This issue may occur due to poor route planning, dangerous driving, or changes in the processing of customer orders.

  • 7. Real-Time Fleet Data And Analysis

Each of your trucks generates a considerable amount of data every day. Fleet management benefits your business by being able to stay up to date and check a specific indicator anytime. For example, where a particular truck is located or how many pick-ups and deliveries are already completed.

  • 8. Fraud Prevention

You probably have no doubt that you have a team of highly skilled and honest drivers on your staff. However, driver fraud is already a large problem in logistics. Fleet management systems benefit your company by adding transparency in all areas, making it harder for anyone to do something they shouldn’t be.

In Summary…

Those are the main advantages of fleet management systems for companies. When you are ready for your business to benefit from this software, make sure it’s customised to meet your needs. Fleet management systems work so well for businesses because of their flexibility in adapting to your specific business requirements.

Investing in a system from MyTrucking will allow you to take advantage of the huge benefits of fleet and transport management systems combined in one user-friendly application.

Start using MyTrucking today to optimise the vehicle management of your business. Receive all the advantages of using the most complete fleet management software on the market.

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