Separately, all those things are good for business. Put them together, and you’re head and shoulders above the competition.
Technology lends a helping hand in just about every area of running a business nowadays. Fleet management is no exception.
On the contrary – here at Fleetcare, we’ve been helping our clients analyse and improve their operations for years. We do it using fleet telematics.
The benefits of fleet telematics
In a nutshell, fleet telematics puts the potential of a control centre in the palm of your hand.
You know the ones from TV shows and movies. Huge wraparound screens, data feeds blinking and blipping, live trackers moving across a map.
All that technology is available to Australian businesses with only a smartphone or laptop and Fleetcare’s In-Vehicle Management systems (IVMS).
Fleet telematics will transform how your business approaches fleet management. With real-time tracking, accurate historical data, automated reporting and instant alerts, you gain a long list of benefits that are essential for staying competitive in a tech-driven world:
- Reduce business costs
- Improve driver safety
- Optimise performance
- Prevent costly breakdowns
- Eliminate theft and minimise losses
Overall, the benefits of telematics solutions for fleets can be summed up in four words: data-driven decision-making.
By leveraging real-time insights and analytics, you can make better business decisions.
Reduce operating costs
Cost control is one of the biggest benefits of telematics solutions for fleet management.
With fuel prices only going one way (up) and worker salaries accounting for the biggest portion of budgets, you want to identify the most economical way to move from A to B.
Telematics uses GPS tracking to monitor your fleet’s real-time location and collect data along every route.
Using all this data, you can make small changes that add up to enormous operational savings:
- Identify the most fuel-efficient routes
- Reduce unnecessary overtime
- Optimise in real-time to reduce fuel costs
- Increase driver efficiency without adding to their workload
- Minimise unnecessary idling
- Redirect drivers to avoid accidents and congestion
All these changes reduce operating costs across your fleet and contribute to a greener, more sustainable operation.
Improve driver safety
Safety is paramount in fleet management.
Telematics systems gather data on driving habits and conditions, enabling you to keep your people safer on the road.
By monitoring harsh braking, speeding, fatigue from long drives and other risky behaviours, our clients implement targeted interventions that reduce the risk of crashes by up to 20%.
For example, you can provide proactive training for employees who display risky behaviour, or rebalance workloads to ensure nobody is driving unsafe distances.
Every step to improve safety and compliance extends the benefits of fleet telematics to the human element of your operations.
Fleetcare’s Advanced Vehicle Management (AVM) telematics solution for fleets takes safety a step further. AVM provides instant alerts for safety and breakdown events, including crashes, diagnostic trouble codes and low battery health.
These alerts keep your drivers safer and enable our client services team to respond faster, which means peace of mind for you and your team.
Better customer service
Another way fleet telematics benefits your business is by improving accuracy in customer communications.
Few things are more damaging to your customer relationships than missing delivery deadlines.
Fleetcare’s telematics solutions for fleets enable real-time, two-way communications between office staff and drivers. This streamlines customer queries and helps you make faster, better decisions:
- Provide accurate delivery estimates and real-time updates
- Respond to service calls and customer queries faster
- Improve invoice accuracy by removing the guesswork from costs
- Collaborate with drivers using data-driven decisions
These capabilities increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, helping you get ahead of the competition.
Preventative and proactive maintenance
Telematics data allows for meticulous vehicle health monitoring, leading to fewer breakdowns and lower unscheduled maintenance costs.
This proactive fleet management approach ensures that vehicles always operate at peak efficiency. It’s a compounding benefit of fleet telematics because preventative maintenance decreases ownership costs and increases resale value.
Fleetcare’s IVMS telematics solution for fleet vehicles provides real-time diagnostics, including:
- Fuel consumption
- Coolant temperature
- Engine load
- Speed and distance
- Battery health
This information is crucial for developing a regular maintenance schedule. It eliminates the guesswork from fleet maintenance, saving you significant money over the life of the vehicles.
Fleet security and loss prevention
Although it’s uncomfortable to think about, safeguarding assets against theft – whether of vehicles or fuel – is an essential benefit of telematics for fleets.
For starters, GPS tracking enables you to monitor each vehicle’s real-time location. This deters potential thieves and makes for a swift recovery should the vehicle be stolen or towed.
Our AVM system triggers an alert when the vehicle moves without ignition present. The driver gets one too, making it easier to confirm the incident, contact the authorities and use IVMS to recover your asset.
On the operational front, telematics enables you to access real-time and historical data to identify employees misusing fleet vehicles. For example, you can:
- Monitor fuel consumption
- Receive notifications when vehicles leave a predefined area (called “geofencing”)
- Compare fuel consumption between vehicles or drivers
- Integrate fuel card usage with telematics data
If there’s anything out of the ordinary, you’ll recognise it. We can also help you set up custom data dashboards to spot vehicle misuse and safeguard your bottom line.
Transform your operations with the benefits of fleet telematics
By harnessing the power of real-time data and analytics, you can make better, faster and more accurate decisions that benefit your team, assets and profit margins.
Fleetcare helps Australian business owners drive home the benefits of fleet telematics for operational efficiency, safety and cost control. Our industry-leading IVMS and AVM telematics solutions are a smarter way to manage your fleet.
Get in touch on 13 43 33 or contact us online to learn more about the benefits of telematics for your business.