Discover how enterprise fleet management optimizes vehicle acquisition, maintenance, fuel costs, and safety and how Fleetblox makes it even easier.
Managing a large vehicle fleet is a complex task, particularly for businesses that rely on transportation for their daily operations. As organizations develop and fleets grow, the complexity associated with the management of assets becomes increased. The process of asset management is a complex undertaking of procurement, maintenance, fuel costs, and regulatory compliance. As we’ll see, enterprise fleet management can be challenging. Fortunately, cloud-based fleet management solutions now simplify operations and enable considerable cost reductions.
In this piece, we will look at why Fleet Management Enterprise is essential; common obstacles organizations experience; and how cloud technology, especially Fleetblox, is changing fleet management. We will focus on how using the right fleet management system can help organizations improve workflows, improve safety, and save money.
What is Enterprise Fleet Management?
Enterprise Fleet Management involves overseeing the entire lifecycle of a company’s fleet of vehicles; it is like human resources management, but for vehicles. This includes overseeing everything from vehicle acquisition and maintenance management to vehicle disposal and retiring vehicles at the end of their lifecycle.
Enterprise fleets usually consist of a variety of trucks, vans, and sometimes specialty vehicles designed for what the vehicles are clearly built to do. As part of the Enterprise fleet management, we are responsible for managing these vehicles throughout the lifecycle of a vehicle, which encompasses being maintained properly and complying with the rules and regulations.
Fleet management software systems, especially those which are cloud-based, allow fleets to grow operationally and effectively. Tracking vehicles in real-time, ensuring service schedules are maintained, and using analytics to be proactive about maintenance needs make fleet management a streamlined operation.
The heart of effective fleet management today is a cloud-based fleet management software solution that integrates vehicle tracking, and possibly remote diagnostics, to simplify and benefit the fleet operator and fleet manager.
Why Businesses Need Enterprise Fleet Management Today
When businesses expand their fleet operations expand. The recipe for success is employing best in class fleet management solutions, to optimize operational efficiency, multiply savings and lower costs. Below are three key reasons why Enterprise Fleet Management (EFM) is so important for today’s businesses.
- Cost Efficiency : Cost efficiency is one of the biggest benefits of managing fleet operations. From cloud-based fleet management systems businesses can mitigate fuel usage, lower maintenance costs, and have live costs to monitor performance. Fleet management and cloud cost optimization systems can lower fuel costs tremendously from identifying operational inefficiency and opportunities for optimization.
- Increased safety : A managed fleet is a safer fleet. Businesses that monitor vehicle health, repair schedules, and regularly scheduled maintenance, will respond to avoid accidents and improve safety. Safety driven operations that monitor vehicle performance while in-service and avoid accidents will ensure that vehicles remain in-operational condition, and reduce in-service failures due to breakdowns and accidents.
- Improved Efficiency : Efficient fleet operations are about making the best use of vehicle time. Fleet management techniques will ensure that vehicles take the right route to eliminate delays and minimize idle time. Fleet operations have fewer interruptions, once again allowing for maximized productivity by making use of fleet insights and data.
Key Features of an Enterprise Fleet Management System
An enterprise fleet management system should provide a complete range of functionality to help organizations increase their efficiency. Here are some of the important functions an organization to consider:
Vehicle Tracking With Remote Diagnostics
GPS vehicle tracking provides the ability to see activity of the fleet in real-time, and a fleet manager will know what is going on in their fleet 24/7. Combined with remote diagnostics, the fleet owner can conduct vehicle health checks, and a fleet manager can proactively address issues before they become costly repairs.
Route and Fuel Optimization
When utilizing a fuel management system, the organization can minimize needless road fuel consumption, monitoring fuel usage, and scheduling operations while optimizing delivery times. Route and fuel optimizing ensure the vehicles take the shortest distance and saves on unnecessary fuel.
Driver Tools and Client Portal
A client portal offers a convenient interface for businesses to access fleet information in one place. It simplifies the approval process, billing, and document accessibility, which gives drivers and managers a simplified way to measure key metrics and make decisions based on data.
Scalable Software and Multi-Location Control
Businesses with a fleet across multiple locations need scalable solutions. A scalable fleet management program allows businesses to manage vehicles efficiently across various geographies, allowing for centralized control of fleet operations and management irrespective of where the operation is.
Fleet Manager Responsibilities in Enterprise Fleet Management
Fleet managers have a diverse range of responsibilities that require various skill sets, from logistics to financial management. Some of those responsibilities include:
- Managing new vehicle purchases and planning for a fleet size and type of vehicle.
- Managing vehicle repair and maintenance schedules, with the goal of reducing down-time.
- Tracking driver behavior and ensuring safety protocols are met.
- Optimizing fleet expense through data and performance.
In an enterprise fleet management system hosted in the cloud, fleet managers are able to oversee their departments duties easily, even with a large fleet, because they have access to real-time data and analytics.
Common Issues with Enterprise Fleet Management
While fleet management enterprise can provide a number of attractive benefits, there are several problems they deal with:
- Controlling Costs: Managing various costs such as fuel, repairs, and insurance remains a constant struggle.
- Coordinating Maintenance at Multiple Sites: Fleets often include vehicles in multiple cities, or even countries, making it hard for them to ensure proper maintenance is taking place consistently across the fleet.
- Managing Massive Amounts of Fleet Data: Fleet management generates a massive amount of data. Having experience with this management is critical to ensure that the data is used to make valuable decisions.
- Scaling Solutions as Fleets Expand: The management process must expand as the fleet expands. If the management resources do not increase, costs and inefficiencies will be incurred and even halted.
- Preventing Misuse of Assets: Another challenge faced that can be solved with fleet management enterprise tools is ensuring that the company’s fleet assets are gained usage for their controlled purposes and not misappropriated.
Advantages of an Enterprise Fleet Management System
An enterprise fleet management system equipped with an exhaustive set of features can help an organization overcome challenges and enjoy the multitude of benefits such as:
- Boost in Efficiency: With technology, processes get structured and streamlined, saving time and enabling managers to focus on what’s more important and thereby improving productivity.
- Enhanced Cost Control: Automatically generated reports and analyses enable companies to optimally control costs, thus enhancing cash management and financial performance.
- Improved Safety: Fleet management software aids in regulatory compliance and driver monitoring to minimize accidents and other traffic infractions.
- Higher ROI: Data-driven decisions enable better oversight of the fleet that will yield a higher return in the long run.
How Fleetblox Transforms Enterprise Fleet Management
At Fleetblox, we are changing the way businesses manage fleets through superior cloud based technology that streamline the process:
Cloud Based, No Devices Required
Traditionally telematics is cumbersome with hardware, but Fleetblox is changing the game with an all cloud fleet management approach. This obviously allows companies to eliminate the high costs of the IT hardware and associated costs. Also greatly reducing overall costs for your business.
Real-time tracking with maintenance automation
Fleetblox offers not only tracking, but tracking and maintenance automation with one software. Fleetblox automatically generates real-time alerts, manages scheduling for preventive and predictive maintenance and monitors compliance using the same software, which makes your fleet reliable and runs more efficiently.
Multi-Location fleet management and Scalable system software
Fleetblox has the capabilities to manage multi-location fleets with ease. Whether that be across your cities or across countries, our scalable system software takes the difficulty out of managing your fleet.
Improved safety and major cost savings
With Fleetblox you gain AI driven insights that will allow you to reduce your fuel output, reduce break downs, and accidents to provide you more control to improve your fleet’s safety and operational expenditure.
Ready to Upgrade Your Enterprise Fleet Management with Fleetblox?
The challenge is, take the next step to transform your fleet operation by contacting our team today to schedule a personalized demo of Fleetblox or begin your free trial. Start using Fleetblox to help you reduce cost, improve safety, and streamline operations right away.
Conclusion
Enterprise Fleet Management is no longer optional, it’s critical for any company with a company fleet. With increasing costs, compliance requirements, and managing vehicles across multiple locations, manual systems simply cannot keep up.
A modern fleet management enterprise system, powered by the cloud can provide real-time visibility, predictive maintenance, as well as automated reports to allow your company to operate efficiently and at a safe cost.
Fleetblox continues to raise the bar on these advantages with their cloud based, device-less fleet management system. They offer unmatched scalability, real-time vehicle insights, and AI-powered maintenance notifications. The end result: lowers costs, improved safety, and reducing fleet management complexity no matter the fleet size – 50 vehicles vs. 5,000?
