Fleet management organisations and consultants are widely used by fleets to collect data, report and help manage fleets. They either have their own proprietary telematics system, such as Toyota Fleet Management, or have a liaison with a telematics provider and can help you determine what features are most suitable for your fleet, be it small or big.
Typically, they are in a position to advise you how to look at the right things to get better fleet utilisation. They know that many organisations are looking for the same thing and have become experts in understanding what telematics reporting will deliver most benefit to your size and type of business.
They can help you devise what data is collected and provide the option of issuing you with daily, weekly or monthly reports that you can then use for a variety of fleet management considerations, such as informing driver training programs or proactively scheduling maintenance on your vehicles.
Accountability will remain with you if you use a fleet management organisation, however, you won’t require in-house resources and training to use and mine a telematics system.
Certainly, for a small fleet, where concerns about health and safety and compliance issues are equally as important as for bigger fleets, outsourcing the whole telematics service may be the best way to go. For one thing, it helps overcome any issues with staff turnover, where your only in-house trained operator may leave their job.
While telematics users widely list the benefits of having the systems, they often say they underestimated the staff resources required to get optimal use from them.
“This is probably the part where most people fail,” said Greg Hattander, fleet co-ordinator at Lake Macquarie Council. “They look at the cost and say yep were going to put the GPS in and start collecting the data but people only use the tool reactively. You can use it to plan trips and start to use things more proactively provided you have people who can use it.”
Clearly, that’s where an expert fleet management organisation can help, by analysing the data and making recommendations on how you can better use your fleet.
