We understand that being a Fleet Manager comes with many considerations in mitigating risk and ensuring the well-being of both the fleet and your drivers. Keeping track of your fleet’s day-to-day operations is no small task. However, an effective fleet management system can streamline your daily workload and reduce the risks associated with your fleet.
Keeping track of your fleet’s servicing schedule can be a real challenge. If you don’t, you run the risk of facing costly repairs, more frequent breakdowns, and even endangering your workers on the road.
Fleets that don’t get the services they need are much more likely to see breakdowns, which leads to tow trucks, hire cars, and putting vehicles out of action. Each of these can add a significant cost to your organisation and decrease the productivity of both your fleet and employees. Workers may also have fewer available vehicles, opening up the risk of missing or rescheduling meetings if adjustments are not made.
A fleet management solution can mitigate these problems by ensuring you’re always notified when vehicle servicing is due. GPS tracking ensures the odometer readings of your fleet vehicles are constantly tracked, providing you with a timely and accurate notification of when the next service is due. This keeps your fleet rotating like clockwork and reduces the likelihood of vehicles being removed from the fleet for extended periods due to unexpected problems.
Another way effective fleet management can play a role in risk reduction is through the identification of risky driver behaviour. This includes speeding, harsh braking and cornering, fatigue, or distracted driving.
This is especially important considering how dangerous it is on our roads. A third of all traffic is either commuting or work-related travel and 42% of all workplace deaths in NZ and 64% of workplace deaths in Australia involve vehicles. With statistics like these, it is imperative that organisations take their duty-of-care responsibilities seriously.
One way to achieve this is via GPS tracking. Fleet Managers can proactively monitor risky driver behaviours and be informed if any driver is habitually speeding or driving recklessly. Identifying drivers that take excessive risks on the road can allow you to take corrective action, fulfilling your responsibility to protect your drivers and those they share the road with.
Regardless of the size of your fleet, it’s important to ensure you have the ability to keep on top of your fleet’s finances. This includes the differences in fuel efficiency across your fleet or any tendencies for some vehicles to experience more issues during use. Being unaware of these factors can lead to unnecessary expenditures for your organisation in excessive fuel consumption, frequent roadside assistance, or repairs that temporarily take vehicles out of action. All of these reduce the productivity of your fleet and increase financial expenses.
An effective fleet management system maximises utilisation, providing oversight and enabling control over which vehicles are assigned to particular tasks. Ensuring fit-for-purpose allocation can minimise incidents on the road and reduce fuel cost through giving preference to the most efficient vehicles. This informed control helps your organisation cut fleet costs and reduce exposure to financial risk
Another risk that can be mitigated with a fleet management solution is vehicle theft. In 2020 an average of 131 vehicles were stolen in Australia each day, and in New Zealand, a car theft occurs every twenty-three minutes.
Having a sound key-management system can make all the difference in protecting your fleet. Effective key management helps to keep vehicle keys out of unauthorised hands and provides fleet managers with an auditable account of when and where your keys were taken and by who. This means you have total control over who has access to your fleet vehicles, preventing car theft by locking keys in intelligent electronic cabinets that only provide the right key at the right time, to the right person.
The GPS tracking functions of fleet management further aid in vehicle theft prevention and can assist in recovery. Firstly, Fleet Managers can utilise geofencing features on their depot and vehicles, which notify you if fleet vehicles or expensive plant and machinery are taken after-hours or on weekends. This lets you take immediate response if a theft or unauthorised use has occurred. What’s more, the in-built GPS tracking provides real-time location data that can be invaluable in asset recovery in instances of theft.
As you can see, there are numerous risks associated with managing fleets. But with a solid fleet management solution, you can easily minimise or mitigate these risks. Smartrak has a number of comprehensive solutions that help Fleet Managers tackle all the challenges your organisation may face. To learn more, feel free to get in touch with us via the form below
