We realise Fleet Managers are under pressure to do more with less. Finding fleet utilisation improvements while reducing spending on vehicles and maintenance can be a hard juggling act. To that end, it’s imperative that you look for a fleet management system that adds operational value and automates essential tasks. It should also provide the ability to dive into data so you can make informed decisions about where to take your fleet.
We are starting to see governments setting targets for organisations to lower emissions and transition to EVs. So not only are Fleet Managers required to do more with less, but they also need to start planning the transition to greener fleets. That’s why a top fleet management solution is so important.
One of the biggest challenges Fleet Managers face is how to increase vehicle utilisation. Smartrak has seen fleets achieve this by using our solutions to reduce the number vehicles in their fleet, without any impact to organisational productivity. This is effectively saving the organisation money. But how do you know when it’s appropriate to cull fleet vehicles?
Without accurate data on vehicle usage, it’s almost impossible to make decisions about your fleet. That’s where a fleet management system really shines.
Vehicle utilisation is generally broken down into two separate components:
A fleet management system that combines car park and trip utilisation gives Fleet Managers the tools to start making intelligent decisions about their fleets.
It’s no secret that vehicles need regular upkeep and maintenance. But managing the timing and scheduling servicing for a whole fleet of vehicles can be a real challenge. One compounded by the fact that servicing schedules are often based on distance travelled rather than time elapsed. A good fleet management system will automate that process by keeping track of the odometer of every vehicle in your fleet.
This is achievable through the use of GPS tracking. Installing GPS tracking into each fleet vehicle means the system can keep tabs on how far each vehicle has travelled. Smartrak’s fleet management system can set reminders for every vehicle, automatically alerting administrators when the next service is due.
These alerts can be set at regular intervals, making them perfect for tracking vehicle registration or Warrant of Fitness checks. Automating these tasks frees up the fleet management or administration team. It gives them the ability to focus on more important and productive tasks.
Drivers are central to the safe operation of your fleet. While most staff will obey all the road rules, there are bound to be individuals that aren’t great drivers. A top fleet management system provides a way to track and manage individual drivers and implement proactive education and training.
One way to achieve this is through the use of Dashboard Reporting. Dashboards are a great way to visualise the data being collected by both GPS tracking and pool booking solutions. A good dashboard offers valuable insights into how drivers are performing, and a snapshot of overall fleet performance. They also identify who was driving a vehicle at a particular time. This means adverse behaviours can be reported on a driver-by-driver basis.
This data enables Fleet Managers to proactively identify driving behaviours that sit outside of acceptable company parameters. This could be a trend of speeding, or instances of harsh breaking or cornering. These trends highlight a pattern of behaviour that can be acted upon before it escalates to an accident, infringement, or unnecessary wear-and-tear on fleet vehicles.
Another way organisations look to reduce fleet costs is through the use of shared fleets. Gone are the days where each employee was given a vehicle, only for it to sit idle in the car park during the workday. Instead, organisations recognise that the same travel requirements can be met with a reduced pool of shared vehicles. But in order to effectively manage a shared fleet, a fleet management system must be streamlined and simple to use.
A solution such as PoolCar provides organisations with the ability to automate most booking functionality. Every staff member can make bookings for vehicles they are authorised to drive, and data such as cost centres can be captured for reporting or cost recovery purposes. And because the solution is online, bookings are updated in real-time. Staff can make bookings either via their computer or smartphone, which eliminates instances of double booking.
Another critical component of a top fleet management system is the ability to restrict access to vehicles. If staff can bypass booking a vehicle and still collect keys, it undermines the ability for fleet managers to accurately track fleet utilisation. An integrated key management system solves this problem by holding the keys in a secure cabinet, with access authorisations controlled online. Another option is to use a keyless solution requiring only an access card or code for entering a vehicle. Once again, this would be subject to online authorisations.
Key management is also helpful if keys go missing. It makes it a simple matter for Fleet Managers to check who was the last person to check them out. This adds a layer of accountability by making sure staff return the keys at the end of a booking. The automation of check-out and check-in via an integrated key management solution helps reduce the administration of keys within your fleet, saving both time and money.
Incidents and infringements are an unfortunate aspect of managing any fleet. You never want to have to deal with them, but when required, you want to be sure you can pinpoint which employee is responsible for a speeding fine or vehicle damage.
A top fleet management solution combines GPS tracking with driver identification methods to ensure that managers have the ability to interrogate data to understand who was responsible. By knowing who was driving at a particular time, you can cross reference it against any infringement or incident report.
The final thing to consider in a top fleet management system is choosing a partner that isn’t satisfied with the status quo.
At Smartrak, we’re constantly thinking about what’s coming around the corner. We acknowledge that the fleets of the future are going to be different, that’s why we’re thinking about how a fleet management system can meet the challenges of tomorrow. Our vision for Corporate Mobility, which takes cues from the sharing economy, is central to meeting these emerging challenges.
Our analysis shows that a top fleet management system can only get a traditional fleet so far along the journey to maximum utilisation.
Through Corporate Mobility and the lessons of the sharing economy we’re looking at how organisations can share vehicles with their employees; essentially hiring them out to either internal departments, or, for private use. This could allow vehicles to be productive even outside of working hours. The next step could be sharing vehicles between organisations to better manage demand during peak use periods.
Through innovations like these, Smartrak is ensuring that a top fleet management system will always be responsive to the operational and business demands of our customers.
Want to know more about how Smartrak could support your organisation? Contact us below.
Modern telematics solutions offer Fleet Managers a suite of reporting and diagnostic tools. Not only does GPS pinpoint where a vehicle was, it can also provide information on driver behaviour such as excessive speeding, harsh acceleration, braking, and cornering. This data can be important in addressing staff driving behaviours, especially when they cause unnecessary wear and tear on fleet vehicles.
Often, it's just a few individuals causing the majority of infringements, incidents, and exhibiting poor driving behaviour. Unfortunately, without the ability to confidentially identify these employees, any training is likely to be less effective. You’ll know you have a problem but won’t be able to pinpoint who is causing the issue. And unless you can directly link an employee to a particular cause of concern, they are unlikely to alter their behaviour.
Driver behaviour provides a means to close that information gap. Suddenly every trip is attributed to an individual user, and Fleet Managers can start addressing driving trends that lie beyond accepted parameters.
GPS tracking opens the door to a wealth of data about how fleet vehicles are driven. While it might be tempting to comb through the data for single instances of speeding, excessive acceleration, or braking, it is rarely practical. Where the data is more powerful is looking at trends.
While speeding is never a good idea, there are occasional instances where it may be considered acceptable. For example, perhaps a driver needs to overtake a tractor on a highway, or it's an instance of slightly drifting above the speed limit before correcting. Penalising drivers for single instances of speeding can have a detrimental impact on organisational culture and attitudes towards GPS tracking. At the end of the day, you want every employee to want to drive safely. A punitive approach is rarely the right solution.
However, if the GPS data identifies a regular pattern of behaviour over a period of weeks or months, it can indicate the need for proactive action. A trend is a much more powerful call to action than a single data point. It’s important to consider the human factor when looking at driver behaviour.
Having data on individual employee performance is irrelevant unless you can analyse it for key insights. We know Fleet Managers are incredibly time-poor; trawling through data points is a low priority. That’s where Smartrak’s Dashboard comes in.
Smartrak’s Dashboard provides a range of ready-to-digest insights on fleet performance. What’s more, it provides a breakdown on individual driving performance through our Driver Score. This draws upon various data sources and uses a custom-designed formula to score individual drivers.
At a glance, you can see exactly who in your organisation is doing well and who might need additional training and support. What’s more, once you’ve seen the overall snapshot, you can dive deeper into the data in order to truly understand the issues driving these scores. This helps guide your organisation towards a safer driving culture, with data being the driving enabler.
Another way to use the data from our Driver Score metric is as a foundation for internal competitions. Friendly rivalries between departments can promote a positive safety culture, where peers encourage one another to do better. Breaking the Driver Score down either by an individual team or department has the potential to foster a sense of healthy competition.
By merging individual scores into a larger ‘team score’ you negate instances where individuals are singled out for their poor performance. Instead, the competition provides a positive environment that can encourage individuals to improve their driving behaviour, potentially further motivated by a bonus or reward.
As long as the focus is on celebrating success, rather than punishing individuals who aren’t currently performing at their best, a competition can help kickstart a positive, safer, driving culture within your organisation.
Combining GPS tracking with driver identification in Smartrak provides organisations with the ability to identify and address behaviours that lie outside accepted norms. By doing so, it provides an opportunity to kickstart a safer driving culture that can be championed by all staff. At the end of the day, a safer driving culture ensures staff avoid accidents, and can go home safely to their families.
In the fourth episode of Smartrak Conversations, Nick and Matt are joined by special guest Jenny Seddon. Jenny is the Commercial Advisor at Plunket, a New Zealand charity that provides support services for the health and wellbeing of children under five. She is also a huge proponent of driver safety. We discuss why driver safety is so important, and what organisations can do to improve in this area.
In this episode of Smartrak Conversations, we cover discuss:
Telematics solutions are a fantastic way to understand how the vehicles in your fleet are being used on a day-to-day basis. They can detect speeding and when a vehicle is being over-driven, including through harsh acceleration, breaking, or cornering. While this information is important to Fleet Managers, without the ability to know who was driving at a particular time, getting to the bottom of risky driving behaviour can be challenging. That’s where Driver Identification comes in.
We talk a lot about the importance of choosing a solution that streamlines fleet management and simplifies everyday tasks. Sometimes it is as simple as finding better ways to track your fleet instead of using a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, or booking pool vehicles in a shared Microsoft Outlook calendar.
When it comes to identifying who is using a vehicle at a particular date and time, there are several avenues you can take. The important takeaway is that regardless of the method you choose, you can start putting the pieces of the puzzle together. Pretty soon, you’ll be gaining a much better picture of who is driving which vehicle at any time.
Someone once said, ‘there’s an app for that’. It’s fair to assume that most employees have access to a smartphone. We developed the Identify app to provide a lightweight solution for organisations that already have a Smartrak telematics solution installed. Drivers simply open the app and log on to the vehicle they’re about to drive. This will be paired with trip data in Smartrak, so organisations can track who was using a vehicle at any time. Identify is perfect for organisations that want to start capturing driver identification data, without all the bells and whistles that come with some of our more comprehensive solutions.
An alternative to Identify is the Smartrak’s iButton. This provides similar functionality to Identify but is a physical device. Employees must place the iButton on a digital reader installed in each vehicle before driving. Each iButton is unique and is registered to an individual employee.
A better option for driver identification is through the use of a pool vehicle booking solution such as PoolCar. The reason that PoolCar is a step above Identify is that it opens the door to a whole suite of booking smarts and automation. Automating processes removes the burden placed on administration staff to ensure vehicles are available and that staff have permission to drive them. Because bookings are visible to all users as soon as they are created, it eliminates the issue of staff accidently double-booking a vehicle. It also provides the ability to capture trip data, such as additional passengers, intended destination, and cost centres.
Another advantage of PoolCar’s automation is the fact that drivers don’t need to remember to log-on and log-off. PoolCar has a default booking length that can be extended by users when required. When the booking start time is reached, the vehicle is automatically checked out. At the end of the booking, it will automatically be checked-in again. This eliminates situations where employees forget to log-off, stopping others from booking that particular vehicle.
The best approach to driver identification would be to supercharge PoolCar through the implementation of a key management solution such as KeyMaster or Keyless Entry.
The reason key management takes driver identification to the next level is because it identifies exactly when the vehicle is checked out and checked back in. By tying check-out and check-in to the physical process of taking and returning keys, you close the loop on where exactly a vehicle is.
For example, say a vehicle has been booked out for an entire day, but in actual fact the employee only needs it for an hour in the morning and they’ve booked out the whole day ‘just in case’. The act of returning a key to a KeyMaster cabinet at the end of the trip finalises the entire booking (regardless of how much time was remaining on the booking). This means that the vehicle booked for the entire day is immediately freed up and can be booked by other staff members. And if the employee needs it later, they can just jump back into PoolCar and create a new booking.
The other reason Key Management is so powerful is that it eliminates situations where staff collect the wrong vehicle keys. The KeyMaster will only release the key that is associated with the vehicle that has been booked. And if you don’t have a valid booking, you can’t take any key at all. This also adds a layer of accountability to whoever made the booking, as they will be held responsible should the keys go missing. This is especially relevant should someone else be asked to drive during the booking.
It’s worth remembering that any form of the above methods of driver identification are better than none. This is because by doing so, you gain access to Driver Based Reporting. Smartrak has the ability to attribute trip data from our telematics solutions to individuals within your organisation. This means that you can start understanding how each driver is behaving. Our Dashboard gives fleet managers a snapshot of how individuals are performing. There are also several reports that can be run to enable more in-depth analysis of individual driving trends.
Driver identification is a fantastic way to take your telematics solution to the next level. With multiple ways to capture the relevant data, there’s never been a better time to start. Talk to us about driver identification today.
A Vehicle Use Policy (VUP) sets out how employees can access and use company vehicles. Although your organisation is not legally required to have VUP in place, having one helps manage any issues that arise regarding vehicle use. The alternative, of using informal practices to govern how company cars are used, can result in ongoing, seemingly minor issues, growing over time into serious problems.
A VUP will help to formalise your organisation’s expectations around company vehicle use and eliminate any confusion. For example, if an employee is not keeping a company vehicle in good condition or using it inappropriately it’s going to be much easier to address the issue if there’s an agreed policy in place.
This can also be a valuable aid in protecting your organisation’s image with the public; setting standards that cover driving the vehicle safely and keeping it clean. By putting your organisation’s expectations in writing they are more likely to be adhered to.
The policy can also support your health and safety goals by mandating simple daily checks such as working lights, windscreen washer levels, and tyre pressures. Or by reinforcing prohibitions on drinking and drug use.
Each policy should reflect the operational requirements of the organisation and possibly any legacy use cases (do your employees already expect that private use is included?). This is why successful policies are generally developed in conjunction with employees. This doesn’t mean that employees set the agenda, but by enrolling them in the process and explaining why certain things are important you are establishing an expectation that they will agree to be bound by the policy.
While your VUP will be unique to your organisation, there are standard inclusions that are found in most policies. These include:
Company vehicles are considered a place of work under health and safety law so your VUP can be an important aid in meeting your organisation’s obligations. Use the VUP to set down rules around driving, including ensuring that employees are capable and safe to drive (not fatigued or under the influence of drugs or alcohol).
Making sure that your policy stipulates holding an appropriate license will also reinforce your duty-of-care credentials. As will including any specialist vehicles, together with the specific training that’s required to operate them safely.
If your organisation operates an online pool booking system vehicle logs and odometer readings will be automatically compiled. If you do not have an automated system in place and rely on paper log books you should stipulate maintaining up-to-date entries as a mandatory part of your VUP. This will be valuable in reviewing each vehicle’s use and ensuring that Fringe Benefit Tax reporting is accurate.
Talk to your Senior Leadership team about the elements that should be included in a VUP and then share that draft with team leaders to find out if there is anything you have missed. After that, it’s time to talk through the reasons why you are bringing in a VUP with all affected employees.
Once you have gone through this process it’s important that you use the policy. This is an important management and safety tool and it should be treated accordingly. Therefore, signing a copy of the VUP should be a necessary action by all employees who have access to company vehicles.
With your VUP in place you may wish to elevate the visibility you have over your fleet so you can be sure that the VUP’s expectations are being followed. Smartrak has a range of solutions to help you do this, from driver identification solutions that take the ambiguity out of addressing traffic infringements, to vehicle tracking and booking solutions that will detail how a vehicle is being used, including after hours.
The reporting and insights provided by these solutions will enhance your VUP strategy and build on that effort by developing into a broader information offering. Helping you to build a safety culture within your organisation and improve fleet utilisation.
At Smartrak, we're constantly looking for new ways to improve the efficiency of organisation's fleets. With the rapid rise of the sharing economy, it's inevitable that some of the technology will make its way into fleet management.
In this episode of Smartrak Conversations, Nick interviews Smartrak's VP of Product, Steve Harcourt. They discuss:
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Smartrak’s product development is driven by the knowledge that successful innovation is always underpinned by a deep understanding of customer needs. This customer-centric development process is an important part of Smartrak’s culture and today we want to introduce one of the key people tasked with ensuring that the customer’s voice is integrated at the very start and throughout the lifespan of all development projects.
Vice President of Product, Steve Harcourt, believes that there are two elements to achieving customer-centric product development.
“The first thing we have to do is ensure customers are getting the most out of the products they have already bought from Smartrak. For example, our vehicle tracking solution portfolio delivers up large quantities of valuable data for the optimisation and safe operation of fleet vehicles, but we recognise that many of our customers are seeking improved ways to access and interpret this data. We are aware that the data our devices collect is just the raw material. What our customers want are the insights that come from intelligent analysis of that data and the improved decision making that this enables.
Smartrak is nearing the release of a Dashboard that marks a significant step in this direction. It will provide easily digested, but highly informative displays and analysis of the metrics gathered through our solutions, so Fleet Managers gain the visibility they need quickly. The information has always been there, but now it’s going to be delivered in a format that provides a much better user experience.
It’s vital that Smartrak focuses on closing any capability gap between our understanding of the data and how our customers gain knowledge from it. Otherwise, customers are being left to complete the journey on their own.
With initiatives like Dashboard reporting, Smartrak is demonstrating its commitment to being a part of our customers’ whole journey, from collecting the data, through to knowledge creation, and ultimately to informed decision making.”
“Smartrak is already better at this than most companies but going forward we’re going to see more rigor applied to how the observations and experiences of our customers inform development decision making. Customers are going to be enrolled at every step, from identifying a need to clearly articulating how our technologies can best interact with the work they do.
Product development is an iterative process that depends on clarity of purpose and several feedback loops to keep solutions design on track and ultimately meet a need. That’s the process we will follow to ensure a fine-tuned product that delivers solutions that meet our customers’ needs. We will complement these insights with our own experience, drawn from thousands of deployments and customer interactions, to help inform the process. This can be achieved by guiding customers through to end products that deliver to their need, in a consultative journey where we all have something to contribute.
Customers are already seeing the fruits of this approach. There are products that have been developed to meet a specific customer’s need, which are then offered to organisations with similar operational requirements. Each of these is a classic example of being guided by our customers.”
“When you combine the intelligent use of data and a deep appreciation of the customer’s world, you arrive at the place where Smartrak can deliver real value: providing meaningful information to empower transformative change.”
Smartrak’s Corporate Mobility eBook delivers two important messages: there’s a vision for maximised vehicle utilisation, and a corresponding pathway for significant fleet cost reductions.
Currently, utilising a pool booking solution to improve fleet efficiency is a proven way to reduce operational costs. However, even the best-run fleet will still hold onto some stubborn expenses you just can’t seem to shake off.
This is because vehicles cost money, even when they’re sitting idle. Insurance, compliance, maintenance, tied-up capital, space for carparking – the list goes on.
Your vehicle utilisation efforts may have succeeded in eliminating underutilised vehicles and right typing your fleet. However, you’ve gone as far as you can with a traditional approach. What you need now is a shift in thinking.
Smartrak has a wealth of experience when it comes to maximising fleet utilisation in order to reduce waste and cost. However, there’s only so much our technology can achieve when cars sit idle at the end of the working day. Worse still is when fleets acquire excess vehicles to meet peak demand. The majority of the time they'll sit in the car park unused, costing your organisation money.
For a solution to these challenges, we turned to the ideas powering the global success of the sharing economy. Shared e-scooters and shared cars from outfits like Uber have maximised utility for the user. This ensures you only pay for what you need.
We've applied that thinking to the fleets our customers use. That put us on a development pathway that envisaged hiring out cars to employees outside of work hours, to expand overall utilisation and generate additional revenue. We also thought it would be a good idea if you could share your cars with another company, and visa-versa. This means that peak demand requirements could be met with fewer cars.
This thinking even extends to fleets that rely on specialist vehicles, imagine two construction companies sharing a road sweeper?
All of the data and experience we have points to sharing opportunities as being the best way to tackle the fleet costs that are a persistent drain on operational budgets. You can find out more about these exciting developments and the role vehicle sharing will play in Smartrak’s Corporate Mobility vision by downloading the eBook.
Smartrak’s new eBook on Corporate Mobility outlines a ‘new paradigm’ in fleet utilisation. We believe that vehicle sharing between organisations as the most effective way to maximise vehicle utilisation for corporate users.
Our extensive fleet data supports this, showing that carpooling solutions are a proven way to improve vehicle utilisation. This is reinforced via numerous PoolCar deployments, which show improvements in customer vehicle utilisation. But the Holy Grail of maximum utilisation continue to be elusive. We believe there are two factors that are generally responsible for this:
Improving utilisation rates to gain a more productive and efficient fleet requires a shift in thinking. We have identified the innovations being pioneered by the sharing economy as the step-change in vehicle utilisation the industry is looking for.
If your organisation mainly uses non-specialist cars for workday tasks your fleet could soon be taking advantage of solutions that encourage car sharing between employees and even between organisations.
Smartrak has identified several opportunities to include sharing as a part of a Fleet Manager’s toolkit. We have started looking at ways to bring these solutions to you. Encouraging ride sharing for employees travelling to the same destination could be a valuable enhancement to our existing pool booking solution, but that’s just the start. Imagine the revenue opportunities that accrue when vehicles that sit idle outside of the working day can be hired by employees for personal use?
Now expand that thinking to include car sharing between organisations. This could effectively bolster vehicle availability just for those peak demand periods – the savings could be significant. Sharing opportunities are going to enable progress to the next level in utilisation. Smartrak welcomes your input into the development pathway that will bring these solutions to you. To find out more about vehicle sharing and the part it will play in Smartrak’s Corporate Mobility vision download our new eBook now.
