Introduction
Fleet management is the management of a company's vehicle fleet including commercial motor vehicles like cars, vans and trucks. Fleet management services include a number of functions such as vehicle financing, vehicle maintenance, vehicle tracking, vehicle diagnostics, drivers’ management, speed management, fuel management and health and safety management.
Fleet management is a function which allows the company to minimize the risk associated with the investment in vehicles where the company relies heavily upon the company’s internal transportation system by improving its efficiency and making it cost effective.
Fleet management soft wares are the soft wares used by the management of the company to integrate management, dispatch and overall administrative area related to the vehicles all in one place. There are more than many fleet management soft wares available to the fleet management in the market. The point is that what criteria would set to select particular fleet management software to be suited to its company operations.
History
The basic idea that a fleet management would have in mind while selecting appropriate fleet management software is that “what you don’t know about the fleet would be costing you money.” The gray areas of consideration at that point would most probably include the reduction of maintenance cost, simplification of operational processes which improves the profitability of the trucks, provision of total control over the trucks going out, maintenance compliance, regulatory compliance, maximize savings, track costs, increase efficiency, consolidate critical areas etc.
Features
Consolidating and managing information about the drivers and the managers is the first step in reducing the cost of the operations. The software fleet management users would prefer software that addresses the issues and provide answers as to whether the software so selected will be structured enough to implement as it is but flexible enough to customize to meet changing needs? Will it be more than a fleet maintenance tool? Will it provide data about vehicle assignment or any other information that is critical about the management’s fleet efficiency? Will it provide remote self service to provide ease to administrative burden in back office? Does this solution provides ways to pull all of the data together and analyze it, like driver assignment, fuel consumption, maintenance, warranty claims, parts inventory, accidents control etc? Does it have flexible reporting capabilities? Whether it is easy to use and configure and can be dealt with without the requiring the expertise of a programmer, can it customize the specific needs of the company?
There are basically two types of solutions i.e. the desktop solutions and the other is the web based fleet management solution. The desktop solution deals with comparison of key aspects of the operations like identifying warrantee claims and warning of statutory requirements etc whereas the web- based software fleet management system basically performs the functions of tracking mileage inputs, parts inventories, rogue vehicles and password control access and the resale of the vehicles.
Tips and Comments
Today, whether it is the regulatory requirement, administrative hassles, increasing competition or simply the demand of rising fuel and maintenance cost, there are many compelling reasons to consider a fleet management software or solution.
