Managing your Fleet Resources
With a large fleet of vehicles, come multiple responsibilities for a fleet manager. The top most being, able to achieve your task while ensuring that your vehicles run efficiently and without any breakdowns or damages. The next is keeping track of vehicles at all times. The manager should also confirm that the entire fleet is in location in accordance with the task of individual vehicles. The security of individual vehicles should never be compromised. The problem of managing costly resources deployed in geo locations is a big issue that cannot be tackled without the intervention of fleet management software. While the fleet manager can carry out all his duties by delegating where possible, the buck stops with him.
The Extent of Responsibilities
The responsibilities of a fleet manager are fairly extensive:
- Not only must he know the license numbers of all vehicles, but also the part numbers of the major parts of each vehicle. This is to ensure that serviceable parts are not exchanged with spurious and unserviceable components. All these numbers therefore need to be stored online.
- Knowledge of each vehicle at any given time as well as the state of all vehicles round the clock.
- If there is a breakdown, the fleet manager’s team must know of it and must take steps to carry out urgent repairs of vehicles. This may involve rushing spares and skilled manpower to the site where the vehicle is located. Typically, fleet management software development should be capable of not only tracking the entire fleet but also store relevant information for preventive maintenance schedule of the fleet.
- Knowledge of preventive maintenance schedule to enable optimum utilization of individual vehicles.
- A fleet manager is also responsible for ensuring that his fleet is fuel efficient. This is important from the point of view of enlarging the profit margin as well as being sensitive to environment laws.
- When environment laws are strictly adhered to, the fleet will achieve fuel efficiency, safe driving standards as well as extend the lifespan of vehicles and their spares.
The Fleet Management Software
It is important that fleet management software is realistic. The software must be designed keeping managers’ requirements in mind otherwise they will not be able to utilize all the features of the software properly. The basic features such as the GPS coordinates and the utilization charts of the fleet or the monitoring of fuel consumption are simple to use. However, a fleet manager can have problems on ground; effective software is needed to address such problems. One of the necessary capabilities required in a software is remote immobilization of ignition — a feature that could prevent theft and vandalization. The software should be able to detect when a vehicle in a geo location is started by someone who is unauthorized or when a fleet vehicle is driven beyond threshold speeds. The software should also yield data necessary to keep an eye on cost control and productivity.
