The simplest and most effective way to monitor a fleet is by live GPS tracking. With live GPS tracking, fleet managers can monitor both fleet vehicles and drivers. Fleet monitoring can help a business lower operational costs in a number of ways.
This article will discuss just five key ways fleet monitoring can save your business money and help improve your bottom line.
1. Optimise Routes
A digital fleet monitoring software like Fleet Geo records the routes of each fleet vehicle. You can access this data from your smartphone, tablet or computer and make adjustments to routes retrospectively.
By optimising routes, you’ll reduce a fleet’s total mileage and subsequently drive down fuel consumption. Fuel can account for upwards of 25% of a fleet’s total expenses, so using fleet monitoring software to reduce fuel costs is one of the most effective ways to save money.
Read more: 5 Ways to Improve Fuel Management Within Your Fleet
2. Cut Down on Vehicle Misuse
Vehicle misuse can take many forms. From driving a company car for personal errands to using company vehicles after work hours, vehicle misuse is tough to track with just paper logs.
Using fleet monitoring software, you can set custom alerts — called time- and geofences — to be notified whenever company vehicles are used outside of a designated time frame or geographical area (like the company car park).
This will help reduce the wear and tear on fleet vehicles as well as total mileage, both of which will save your business money in the long-run.
3. Eliminate Poor Driver Behaviour
Fleet Geo’s Driving Style Analysis feature monitors your fleet in a variety of ways, including acceleration, speeding, idling and phone usage. Vimcar’s software scores each driver based on their driving efficiency, making it easy to spot the outliers and correct poor driver behaviour.
By eliminating poor driver behaviour, you’ll reduce the wear and tear on your fleet vehicles and lower fuel consumption.
Discover: Vimcar’s UK Fleet Management Software
4. Prevent Unsafe Driving & Accidents
The Driving Style Analysis feature of Fleet Geo also helps prevent unsafe driving and accidents. This not only helps protect your drivers and others on the road, but it also lowers your insurance premiums. Fleet insurance can be costly, so it’s important to save money wherever possible.
5. Track Vehicles & Drivers in Real Time
The most basic way to monitor a fleet is to track vehicles and drivers in real time. Fleet tracking makes for a more efficient fleet and can help your business save money.
By using real-time GPS tracking, you’ll be able to respond to last-minute calls immediately. With the fleet monitoring software, you can see where each of your vehicles are in an instant, and you’ll know which driver is in each vehicle.
You no longer need to make ad-hoc calls to drivers or waste time calling searching for the right one. In a matter of minutes, you can dispatch the nearest driver to fulfil the last-minute call. This way, you’ll avoid fuel-wasting trips for other drivers and save money in the long-term.
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How Fleet Monitoring Can Help Companies Save Money and Become More Professional
Here are ways fleet monitoring can help businesses reduce operating expenses and improve their professionalism:
Fleet Monitoring Decreases Fuel Costs
Fleet monitoring allows you to track the routes of your drivers. As such, you can see which vehicle is taking longer routes and direct them on shorter routes they can travel to the same destination.
When drivers take shorter routes to customer locations, their vehicles will use less gas. This reduces the amount that fleet managers spend on buying fuel in the long run. Fuel takes up about 25% of total fleet expenses. So, a decrease in fuel costs can have a significant impact on your fleet spending.
It Reduces Expenses on Fleet Repairs
Fleet monitoring alert managers whenever a driver misuses a fleet vehicle. Through a time fencing tool, fleet managers can determine when a fleet driver uses the company van outside working hours and call them to order. This reduces the usage frequency of vehicles, and operating costs. Cars that are only used occasionally tend to have less wear and tear. If your fleet vehicles rarely get faulty, you’ll only have to spend a minimal amount on repairs.
Fleet Monitoring Improves Driver Efficiency
Fleet trackers can help analyse the driving behaviour of your workers and show you the report of their driving habits. With these reports, you can determine your driver’s errors and educate them on how to perform their jobs more effectively. Thus, fleet monitoring can help reinforce good driving habits and prevent costly accidents.
Fleet Monitoring Lowers Insurance Premiums
Fleet trackers provide reports on driver behaviour to increase their efficiency. As a result, your workers may likely drive more safely when making deliveries or transporting a client.
Safe drivers are less likely to encounter crashes. When you have low accident rates, your insurer will cover your vehicles at cheaper costs. In addition, your insurer may even give you discounts on fleet insurance premiums.
Without fleet monitoring , you may be unable to determine whether your employees drive safely or improve their driving skills. Such drivers may cause accidents that inflict severe injuries on victims.
When this happens, their insurance may not cover the total expenses incurred during the crash. If your fleet driver encounters such a situation, the company may have to pay for the deficit in victim compensation.
Companies that use fleet trackers avoid all these because the service helps them instil positive driving habits in their workers. Even when your fleet driver experiences a collision, it is less likely that they will be the at-fault driver.
Find out more: Trackers for Cars & Trackers for Vans
It Improves Customer Satisfaction
Fleet monitoring lets you respond quickly to last-minute calls from clients. A fleet monitoring app reveals the location of all your fleet drivers at any particular time. So, when you get an impromptu order from a customer, you can easily find the closest driver to the client and send them there.
Most fleet monitoring apps also provide ETAs (Estimated Time of Arrival), so that you can determine when your driver will arrive and notify the client. As a result, your customers won’t have to wait too long for the driver.
In contrast, fleet managers who don’t use fleet trackers may have to make several calls to drivers to determine their location. This might increase the total working costs of the company.
The Best UK Fleet Monitoring Software
Monitoring a fleet using live GPS tracking is the best way to save money and improve your business’s bottom line. You’ll drive down costs by optimising routes, reducing vehicle misuse and poor driver behaviour and tracking vehicles in real-time.
Vimcar creates award-winning fleet management software that will save your business money. Fleet Geo and the Driver Style Analysis Software are particularly useful for fleet monitoring.
