The best way to get a comprehensive understanding of everything happening with your business is to track fleet metrics. Metrics help fleets find out what they are doing and how well they are doing it. They also allow fleets to demonstrate their proficiency to others and make changes where necessary. Tracking metrics is crucial to improving fleet efficiency and establishing a reputation. However, it is essential to know what metrics are most important and why.
1.Preventive Maintenance
Preventive maintenance is a must for any fleet. Taking care of vehicles before they break down saves companies thousands in lost time and repair costs. Repairing or replacing parts before they entirely break promotes the longevity of the vehicle as well. Preventive maintenance keeps fleet vehicles running at top efficiency for longer.
Fleet management software such as Azuga can help fleets create fleet maintenance checklists, schedule maintenance appointments, and even set up alerts so a vehicle never misses a maintenance appointment. The most important part of preventive maintenance is staying on schedule, and fleet management software helps make that easy. Fleet managers should check on their vehicles and assets frequently to ensure they are completing maintenance on schedule.
2.Fuel Costs
Any fleet manager knows that fuel is one of the highest costs for their company. Therefore, they should always be looking at the fleet’s fuel efficiency and spending. Fleet management software helps fleet managers track a company’s fuel expenses, along with fuel usage and waste. Even better, this software can help fleets implement measures to save fuel, such as route optimization, tracking telematics, and tracking the location of vehicles. High fuel costs are an immense drain on fleets of all sizes, so managers must track where fleets are using fuel and see where they can cut that usage back.
3.GPS and Telematics
One of the most important jobs of a fleet manager is fleet tracking. GPS fleet tracking is a necessity for every fleet company. Seeing where vehicles are can help optimize job assignments, streamline route planning, and prevent unauthorized use of vehicles. Telematics tracks how the vehicle is being used. Telematics also allows fleet managers to track essential data like the frequency of diagnostic trouble codes (DTC) or engine issues in order to stay on top of any problems that may come up with the vehicle. Information such as speed, location, and fuel consumption are all tracked with telematics. This data helps fleet managers keep track of a vehicle’s safety and efficiency on the road.
4.Accidents and Safety
Safety is any fleet’s top priority. Therefore, tracking driver behavior is crucial to encouraging safety amongst the fleet. Telematics helps with this by monitoring speed, hard braking, rapid acceleration, and similar dangerous driving practices. Additional safety measures like dash cams can detect distracted driving, drowsy driving, and aggressive behaviors. These are highly beneficial in gauging a fleet’s safety status. Azuga also conducts programs like driver safety rewards that further encourage safe driving by rewarding drivers for positive driving behaviors.
5.Assets
A fleet is nothing without its assets. Asset tracking is an integral part of any fleet management software. Fleet managers should always know what they have on hand for a multitude of reasons. Most obviously, it prevents theft. GPS asset tracking allows fleet managers to tell police exactly where an asset is when thieves strike, making quick recovery more likely.
Secondly, it prevents managers from buying duplicate items. Sometimes, a fleet manager might accidentally repurchase something if they don’t know what they have an extra sitting in their warehouse. Asset tracking prevents this from happening by letting managers search what they have and see how fully each item is used before they make any purchases.
Finally, managers can ensure that the fleet is making good use of its assets. An asset that sits unused in the warehouse is wasting space and money that could go towards something that would promote the efficiency and productivity of the fleet. Asset tracking provides reports on what assets the fleet uses, allowing the fleet manager to make decisions about which assets to keep and which can be sold and replaced. Asset tracking is a huge part of optimizing resources and should be a high priority for any fleet organization.
Conclusion
All fleets should be paying close attention to their metrics if they want to maximize their productivity. Fleet management software like Azuga’s makes this easy for fleet managers to do. Real-time data combined with comprehensive reports make Azuga top-of-the-line in helping fleets juggle the vast quantities of data they take daily. Reach out to Azuga online or by phone to find out what solutions may be best for your fleet, and start optimizing your data today!
