A Q&A with Santa, and Fleet Manager Mrs Claus, of North Pole Inc
Telematics systems are now playing a particularly central role in helping fleet managers to measure KPIs. While including all the benefits of a vehicle tracking system, telematics is in fact far more than just a vehicle tracker, and provides uniquely detailed information on how fleets and drivers are performing.
So just which KPIs should fleet managers be tracking? Here’s our top 5:
1. Driver safety. This is always a crucial consideration for fleets, and is a central aspect of their basic duty of care to their employees while they are at work – so close monitoring of driver behaviour is essential. It is also an important indicator with regard to overall road safety standards.
Fleet management software provides managers with information on speeding violations, rough cornering, harsh braking and tailgating. This information provides a compelling debriefing tool when discussing performance with drivers, and also facilitates the development of individually-tailored training programmes.
Telematics data can also be used to create driver safety scorecards and league tables, with incentives provided for the safest and most-improved drivers.
Recommended metrics to measure: driver behaviour incidents, both the number of them and divided by category (e.g. speeding events, driver activity events, high risk incidents).
2. Fuel economy and efficiency. Fuel is a top-three expense for fleet-dependent businesses, and improving fuel economy is a matter of both bottom-line cost savings and environmental impact.
Metrics such as miles per gallon, engine idle time and unauthorised mileage are important for monitoring fuel consumption and efficiency. Armed with a clear knowledge based on these metrics, fleets are likely to be in a much stronger position to make efficiency savings as well as cutting emissions.
Recommended metrics: miles per gallon, engine idle time, unauthorised mileage.
3. Asset utilisation. This is again highly important with regard to understanding the overall efficiency and performance of the fleet, and also in identifying potential efficiency savings.
If there is room to downsize the fleet without hurting standards of performance or customer service, tracking asset utilisation metrics will help you identify that room. For example, where assets are not active for over two days, this may be an indication that there is some slack when it comes to asset utilisation.
Recommended metrics: assets inactive for over two days.
4. Productivity. It’s essential for fleet managers to know just how productive their fleet is. Fleet productivity could be measured using a number of metrics, such as average job completion time, time on site and vehicle activity.
Tracking metrics such as these should make it much easier for fleet managers to identify ways in which they can streamline the business and improve service delivery standards.
Recommended metrics: average job completion time, time on site and vehicle activity.
5. Preventative maintenance compliance. This is indispensable to reducing the risk of downtime, which is a major threat to fleets and can cause serious disruption and delays – with everything this implies for customer service.
Fleets must monitor preventative maintenance compliance – for example, through tracking the number of non-planned maintenance events – to ensure that essential preventative fleet maintenance tasks are being carried out when they should be.
Recommended metrics: number of unplanned maintenance events.
As this brief guide makes clear, monitoring KPIs is a serious undertaking for fleets. This means that to keep tabs on KPIs effectively, fleets must ensure that they have the right fleet management software in place. Your fleet management software needs to present the telematics data gathered on your fleet in a way which is easy to understand, and which is therefore easy to put into practice.
Choosing the right fleet management system for your business could help you deliver significant savings while also allowing for real improvements to standards of customer service.