Keeping vehicles serviced on time sounds like one of the most basic fleet management tasks. In practice, maintaining visibility across a large fleet can be much more difficult.
Vehicles may be approaching a service interval, drivers may already have made bookings, workshops may have completed work, and fleet managers can still be left trying to work out exactly where each vehicle sits in the process.
It is a problem FleetGuru.ai CEO and Co-Founder Eden Shirley believes technology can help solve.
FleetGuru.ai connects service providers with fleet management companies through a digital platform that allows workshops to create work orders, submit them for authorisation and manage the approval process without relying on the traditional sequence of phone calls and manual follow-up.
More recently, the platform has been expanding the visibility available directly to fleet managers.
“There’s over 75,000 fleet manager connected vehicles now,” Shirley said. “These would be vehicles that a fleet manager can see the service history on, be part of the authorisation process, and even book these vehicles online.”
For Shirley, the opportunity is not simply about making administration easier. Better visibility over servicing and maintenance is closely connected to fleet safety.
“Safety is the north star for every fleet manager,” he said. “Fundamentally, the fleet manager’s responsibility is to make sure that the drivers get home safe and that the vehicles are safe.”
The challenge is that traditional processes can leave fleet managers working from reports that only provide a snapshot in time.
A vehicle may appear overdue when the driver has already organised a booking. Alternatively, the fleet manager may assume action has been taken when the vehicle is still operating without the required maintenance.
Shirley said vehicles can sometimes remain overdue for considerably longer than fleet managers realise.
“It can be difficult to manage a large complex fleet,” he said. “Where we can play a role is certainly to create absolute visibility of where the status of that vehicle is at all times.”
FleetGuru.ai is using the information available within its ecosystem to make service scheduling more proactive.
A vehicle’s next service requirement can be triggered by kilometres, time or other available data. From there, the process can identify who is responsible for organising the service and communicate directly with that person.
Rather than requiring a fleet manager to repeatedly call a driver, Shirley sees an opportunity for automated messages and simple digital booking processes to close the gap.
“We know when the vehicle is due for service,” he said. “So it’s either kilometre based or it’s time based. There’s lots of messages that can trigger that for us.”
A driver could receive a message advising that the vehicle is due for service and be asked whether they want to return to their previous service provider. Once confirmed, the booking process can be progressed through the connected platform.
“It shouldn’t require a phone call,” Shirley said.
Reducing those manual interactions has the potential to give fleet teams more time to focus on exceptions and higher-value management activities while also creating a clearer audit trail around vehicle maintenance.
That focus on safety and better fleet management practices is also one of the reasons FleetGuru.ai has joined the Fleet News Group Awards as a Foundation Sponsor.
Shirley said the breadth of the Awards program was important, particularly the inclusion of categories that recognise areas such as safety, sustainability, technology, vehicles and supplier performance.
The Safe Fleet Award is particularly aligned with FleetGuru.ai’s view that fleet safety extends beyond monitoring driver behaviour.
Vehicle servicing, maintenance compliance and knowing whether a vehicle is safe to remain on the road are fundamental parts of the overall risk management process.
Shirley believes the technology required to improve that visibility already exists. The task now is connecting the different participants in the fleet maintenance ecosystem and removing the information gaps between them.
“There’s so much more we can do to inform the fleet manager, keep them up to date in real time,” he said.
For FleetGuru.ai, better maintenance visibility is ultimately about a simple outcome.
“Safer roads is definitely the north star.”
