Find ways to improve efficiency and cash flow in your fleet

Managing your fleet’s bottom line should always be very important – especially during times when budgets are tight. By identifying efficiency opportunities across the fleet, you can control costs while also meeting financial, safety, and other fleet performance goals. Here are some ways that your fleet can improve efficiencies and cash flow to stay moving while keeping the bottom line in sight.

Prioritize your safety program

One of the most significant advances in telematics and analytics-based fleet management systems is the ability to predict which drivers are most at risk for accidents, allowing fleet managers to proactively assign safety training to mitigate risk. The data also shows whether driver safety training programs are effective. Speeding, hard braking, and lack of turn signals are useful to identify risky driving behaviors, but if training and safe-driving reward programs reduce those bad habits and accident rates fail to fall as expected, managers can look at other potential issues such as fatigue or distracted driving. 

Put your fleet data to work

Cloud computing, big data, and connected vehicles are powering advances in-vehicle monitoring, and with each passing year, fleets have more options for capturing actionable information. One of the largest areas where fleets can drive efficiencies is through connected vehicle data, telematics, and driver behavior data. Armed with hard data about incidents such as hard braking, speeding, and harsh cornering, you can actively monitor which policies have the most significant impact on incident reduction. This focus can help you reduce the risk of accidents and drive down fuel and maintenance costs. 

Since fuel represents a significant proportion of operating costs in the transportation sector the need to prevent fuel pilferage is extremely important, thus driving the adoption of fuel management systems. With fuel accounting for around 40% of the overall operating costs of fleets, fuel losses can cause significant financial losses. Fuel management systems also play a role in reducing errors that are possible during manual fueling. If you’re looking for a fuel management partner that can help you reduce your fleet’s expenses, contact us.

Embrace data and integrated fleet management systems

The ability to collect data, analyze that data and distill it down to provide a true picture of the total cost of ownership and identify trends (both good and bad), is essential for determining where there is room for improvement and cost savings. The analysis that comes from vehicle and driver behavior data collection should guide the path that organizations take, and fleet management solution providers should work with their clients to customize the systems to best meet organizations’ particular needs.

Link2Pump offers an open API for seamless and free integration with 3rd party software. Your fuel transactions and tank inventory data in the L2P system can interface via web service with basically any software platform, such as fleet fuel cards, billing programs, fleet maintenance, telematics, and much more. You can also export to text and spreadsheet files.

Monitor progress toward your goals

Set Your Goals: Deciding what data is most important will ultimately be driven by your organization’s goals. For example, if reducing speeding is a focus, data points such as miles per hour over the limit and the number of speeding incidents will be critical.

Run a Benchmark Period: Before rolling out a new program to the whole fleet, a small launch can be run for 60-90 days to gather initial data and better understand areas of opportunity. This data will essentially reveal your fleet’s “baseline.”

Track Performance: One of the most impactful ways to translate telematics data into action is through scorecards. Driver scorecards present information about key performance indicators, such as idling, speeding, harsh cornering, or harsh braking, to encourage changes in driver behavior.