Nothing is as vital to your business's field operations success as the reliability and security of a proper fleet management system. Imagine not worrying about where your workers are or how safely they are operating your vehicles. Fleet management allows you to ensure the safety of your workers, manage costs, and stay on top of maintenance schedules for your business vehicles. The biggest benefit is that it offers a one-stop solution for remotely monitoring and managing your business’s vehicles in real time, all from one central platform.
Read on to learn what fleet management is, how it can benefit you, and how to choose the right fleet management solution for your business.
What is Fleet Management?
Fleet management is the process of overseeing and managing a fleet of vehicles. It involves tracking all aspects of vehicle usage, which includes monitoring vehicle location, fuel consumption, driver behavior, maintenance schedules, and safety compliance.
Fleet management can also include tracking safety protocols such as accident reporting, driver licensing, and vehicle inspections.
The ultimate goal of fleet management is to get the most value out of fleet vehicles in terms of uptime availability and useful life while minimizing downtime and associated costs as much as possible.
What is a Fleet Management System?
A fleet management system is an integrated software platform that helps a business owner, fleet manager, operations manager, or safety manager to oversee their business vehicles. It consists of a suite of software applications, hardware sensors, dash cams, and application programming interfaces that allow you to monitor and control the performance of your workers while on the road. It's a centralized system that gives you visibility and control over your company vehicles.
Fleet management systems use various technologies to manage business vehicles, such as GPS, telematics, fuel monitoring, and more. Having access to all that data in one place helps businesses manage their vehicles and workers efficiently and cost-effectively. With fleet management software, all your information is in real-time, enabling you to ensure your company vehicles and field operations are running optimally.
Seven Key Benefits of Fleet Management Technology
Fleet management offers a complete solution to manage, monitor, and control your vehicles. Here are the top five benefits of using one of these systems for business owners and operations managers:
1. Protect Yourself and Your Employees
When your workers are commuting to job sites or customers’ homes, you want to ensure that your business is protected. Commercial vehicles are often major targets for aggressive litigation since businesses tend to carry higher-value insurance policies and therefore are blamed for traffic accidents. Fleet management systems offering video capabilities effectively protect you and your workers from false claims by providing you with real-time video footage of any incidents. This is especially useful in disputes over who was at fault and can be used as evidence of innocence to exonerate your driver and business.
2. Stay on Top of Maintenance
With advanced maintenance reporting, a fleet management system allows businesses to stay on top of preventative maintenance schedules. This helps to keep vehicles safe and available, while simultaneously extending the useful life of each vehicle. Maintenance-related data points can come directly from the telematics systems and can be based on miles driven or engine hours accumulated. A good system helps track these important metrics and keeps managers organized with maintenance alerts.
3. Remotely Support Workers and Customers
Operations managers can leverage real-time tracking and live video to provide remote support directly to workers and customers. This promotes customer satisfaction and driver safety by being able to immediately take action when needed. Additional capabilities such as geofencing can be used to monitor arrivals and time on-site to support daily operations.
4. Enhance Driver Safety
Fleet management systems can enhance safety by providing data for driver coaching and monitoring. They can provide opportunities for enhanced driver coaching through video analysis of their time on the road. This enables your employees to learn from their mistakes and provides feedback on how to improve their driving skills in the future. Fleet management systems can also provide real-time alerts of potential dangers and help prevent dangerous driving activities.
5. Hold Employees Accountable
Monitoring an employee’s real-time driving performance allows you to hold employees accountable for unsafe habits. A robust fleet management system can monitor driver behavior, including speeding, harsh braking, and rapid acceleration. With this data, you can take corrective action to ensure your employees are following safety regulations and make sure they're driving safely to and from job sites and customers’ homes or businesses. A fleet management system also helps ensure that workers arrive at job sites and customers’ locations on time. Without a fleet management system, it's much harder to hold your employees accountable for irresponsible driving from a liability perspective or sticking to their schedules which ultimately puts your business at risk from a customer service and satisfaction standpoint.
6. Lower Insurance Costs
Insurance is a necessary expense for any business that uses company vehicles. However, insurance premiums for commercial vehicles can be expensive due to the high risks associated with operating them. With a fleet management system featuring video capabilities, however, you can save on insurance costs for your business. Insurance companies offer steep discounts for businesses that have taken measures to ensure the safety of their employees and commercial vehicles. This is because insurance companies know that the use of fleet management systems enabled with video greatly reduces the chances of an accident.
7. Increase Driver Confidence
Driver confidence is paramount when it comes to fleet safety. When employees feel confident and in control, they're less likely to make dangerous mistakes on the road. Fleet management solutions can increase your employees’ confidence by providing drivers with the tools and resources they need to succeed, such as real-time feedback, telematics data, and access to vehicle performance information. Additionally, fleet management systems help ensure drivers follow safety protocols and can provide driver coaching when needed.
Ultimately, fleet management provides greater visibility and control over your company vehicles, enabling you to take action to ensure the safety of your drivers.
How to Choose the Right Fleet Management System
While the benefits of fleet management are clear, choosing the right fleet management system for your business can be tricky. With so many solutions on the market, it's easy to get overwhelmed. However, there are a few key factors that you should consider to ensure that you choose the right fleet management system for your business. These include:
- Connected cameras: To ensure you get the maximum value out of an investment in a fleet management system, it must have connected cameras that offer real-time video footage of what is happening inside and outside your company vehicles. Depending on your requirements, you can choose between front-facing, rear-facing, or dual-facing cameras. The dash cams should also provide clear, high-quality video footage, have night vision capabilities, and be able to withstand extreme weather conditions.
- Cloud storage: Cloud storage ensures that your fleet data is secure and accessible from any device. Cloud-based fleet management systems also make it easier to monitor your employees' driving performance in real-time and manage company vehicles remotely.
- GPS: A good fleet management system should also offer GPS tracking for both on and off-road vehicles. This will enable you to know where your company vehicles are and track them in real-time. Additionally, it will allow you to set up geo-fences and receive alerts when your vehicles enter or leave a specific area.
- Live streaming: Live streaming is an important feature of the right fleet management software. It's one more tool to help you support the day-to-day operations of your team in real-time. This ensures you can quickly address any potential issues before they become problematic and affect the functionality of your fleet.
- Analytics: A fleet management system should also allow you to generate insightful reports and analytics. This will enable you to track employee driver performance, analyze vehicle data, and gain insights into your company vehicle maintenance needs. This will not only help you make informed decisions but also improve the efficiency of your business.
Stay Ahead of the Curve of Fleet Management with SureCam
Fleet management is an essential part of running any successful business that utilizes company vehicles. With the right fleet management system, you can achieve greater visibility and control over your company vehicles, increase safety, and lower costs. But the key to successful fleet management is having the right system in place.
SureCam is the perfect solution for any small to mid-sized business looking to stay ahead of the curve of fleet management. SureCam offers connected cameras with high-quality video footage, cloud storage, GPS tracking, and live streaming capabilities. These features enable small teams to monitor and manage their commercial vehicles and employees in real-time, ensuring the safety of your drivers and vehicles while also helping to lower insurance and fuel costs. Our hardware and software were designed to bring simplicity and efficiency to your fleet management.
Schedule a call today to see our fleet management system come alive in a live demo of our software.
