How fleet management firms can use mobile to enhance workflows

by Daniel Mountcastle

Managing a fleet of vehicles and drivers can be a lot of work. However, it is up to you if this work is going to be chaos or carefully managed coordination of your team. Today, mobile can work to establish order and consistency in your data collection and subsequent management of your fleet, as it can work as an always-on connection between your vehicles, your drivers, and your management team. In this piece we will detail several useful ways that mobile can help you manage your fleet.

1.      Collect driver-based information

In fleet management, vehicle-based solutions often limit your data collection, as data is restricted to the individual vehicle and is not attributable to individual drivers. If you want to learn more about metrics for an individual driver, regardless of which vehicle they used, you would usually be unable to do so. With a mobile solution, drivers can log their individual data no matter which vehicle they use on any particular day. Additionally, with a mobile-based fleet management solution, your drivers can use their own or company-issued smartphones – no more expensive, custom equipment.

2.      Fuel management

With mobile, fleet managers can more easily and quickly manage and optimize fuel consumption across their vehicles.  Rather than using delayed data from mileage sheets, fleet managers can use mobile to view and analyze this data in real time. Additionally, fleet management firms can integrate company fuel cards into their mobile solution, and drivers can use mobile to upload any physical receipts on-the-go. When fuel spend is automatically integrated with  GPS-tracked mileage data, your management team can more easily and consistently have their finger on the pulse of miles-per-gallon and cost-per-mile metrics.

3.      Vehicle maintenance

Tying your fleet management hardware (with mobile, it’s just your driver’s smartphone) to the driver does not mean you need to give up any useful, vehicle-specific data. For example, vehicle maintenance needs and recommendations can still be made for each vehicle, even though a driver and their smartphone may utilize multiple vehicles. With mobile, a driver’s activity with each vehicle is uploaded onto a cloud server, which compiles all car specific data from the entire team of drivers. Mileage and usage-based recommendations can then made and implemented for each vehicle. As all industry players know, proactive vehicle maintenance greatly reduces costly vehicle downtime and reduces overall maintenance costs.

4.      Vehicle inspections

While often a headache for fleet management companies, regulation-mandated vehicle inspections help keep the roads safe. Mobile can help fleet managers better issue, control, and review their fleet's vehicle inspections. Fleet management companies can now keep easily accessible logs of  past vehicle inspections and the resolution-status of any found issues. Inspection reports can also be integrated with mobile eSignature features so that each report can be tracked to a person, time, and even GPS location in order to help ensure the integrity of each vehicle inspection. A mobile-accessed, central repository for vehicle inspection data can help ensure your fleet management company consistently achieves compliance with government regulations.

Conclusion

Today, fleet management companies that do not use mobile are greatly missing out on massive efficiencies that are afforded by mobile technology. A driver’s smartphone can be easily be utilized as a data-gathering tool for your company, and this data can be analyzed and processes can be optimized so that your fleet management company remains competitive.