Spiralling fuel prices, shorter delivery windows and higher customer expectations have made managing a fleet of vehicles a fine art for businesses right across Australia. It doesn’t matter if your fleet is a dozen service vans or a fleet of trucks running the country; it all adds up.

For many business owners, the realisation that choosing the cheaper option is no longer a way of quelling costs was something of a revelation. The option to mitigate expenses by using the information that is already in hand to make better decisions was there all along. Businesses that know how their vehicles are being used invariably find that they can cut excess, get things done better and make their customers happier.

When Data Starts Doing the Heavy Lifting

One of the hottest areas has been telematics. Modern telematics systems pull data from a vehicle in real time, allowing a business to watch fuel efficiency, vehicle location, driver behaviour and much more. Rather than hoping you didn’t miss something, fleet managers can spot trends that impact productivity and safety. While vendors like Radius are just one example of a quickly expanding suite of solutions that allow businesses access to connected fleet tech among their suite of operational needs, businesses can now access telematics as part of a bundle without any added administrative overhead.

Better Days Behind the Wheel

For drivers, these technologies will also have an impact on how they go about their day. More accurate route-planning will help them evade the worst of the traffic, while alerts will ensure faults are repaired before they become problems on the road. Less waiting around for repairs, more time on the road. Once again, in industries where tight delivery schedules rule the day, small changes can have big impacts.

It’s also about safety. Employers have a duty of care for their employees. Data on how their staff and vehicles behave on the road can give fleet operators an idea of how much risk they are exposed to. 

If vehicles are too often driven above the speed limit, or braking harshly through city traffic, or sitting idle for too long, fleet operators can look to change these habits through training or rolling out better plans. And just as importantly in the long term, rolling out these new predictive measures will reduce the risk of breakdowns from occurring in the most unfortunate place of all, the road.

Planning for the Next Chapter

The rush to electric vehicles is making fleet management more complex. In addition to compliance, duty of care and meeting the needs of the business, organisations need to consider charging infrastructure, energy costs and sustainability. For those with proven experience of using connected data, the deployment of electric vehicles is usually less complicated because decisions can be made more accurately and cost-effectively. 

In a way that retailers are now understanding, tracking and interpreting the data is not the whole solution, but combined with the right experience, organisations are better placed to react to the market. As fuel prices vary and consumers become more demanding, fleet efficiency can no longer be used as a differentiator; it is now an imperative. In the future, those who see will be those more prepared to ride out the storm.