Fleet Connectivity Basics: Productivity

Fleet vehicles are a vital part of many organizations. Helping drive productivity for these departments are essential for the growth of the business. One leading way they’re accomplishing this goal is with fleet connectivity technology through a plug-in device or direct with the OEM .

Here are some common productivity uses for fleet connectivity tools:

Vehicle Tracking

Knowing where assets are located throughout the day is a challenge for many operational departments, especially those that need to route drivers to service calls or customer appointments. Fleet connectivity tools allow you to get both a high-level overview and granular breakdown of where vehicles are presently and where they’ve been.

With GPS markers, time stamps and speed information you can easily locate and even recover equipment, if necessary. Branching out into holistic views helps you triage priority calls to whomever is the closest or may be completed the soonest, by viewing the history of each vehicle marker. This allows the fleet or operational departments to make informed decisions without interrupting drivers.

Route Management

For fleets that need close monitoring and dispatch guidance, it’s simple to plan the journey with insight into the best route. Take the guesswork away from the driver on which direction to head to a service stop by establishing the route with prioritized stops.

Utilization Insight

Pull more value out of vehicles while viewing historical utilization information. Example: For vehicles located at a plant or customer site, you can track dwell time, entry and exit times and minor movements. This helps you understand if those vehicles are being used to the full extent, or they’re overloaded with work and it’s best to add a vehicle to increase efficiency.

Vehicle Health Monitoring

Vehicle condition metrics that are important to you are easily trackable. Establish gauges for engine lights and other maintenance issues to productively manage those occurrences. This way, you can avoid vehicle breakdowns by planning unscheduled maintenance during downtimes.

Reporting

Even if you don’t need to make real-time decisions for your drivers in the field, getting weekly and monthly reports can be very useful. Trip history reports become a valuable productivity gauge when you can see travel paths and compare two like trips to determine where one can become more efficient. There’s a wealth of information in both standardized and custom reports that help determine how to make sure drivers are more productive and what changes can you make to create more value.

Fleet Applications And Industries

There are several applications for each of these productivity tools. However, we’ve often seen them used in the following vehicle applications: responding to client service, delivery and support needs; traveling between customer sites for maintenance and deliveries; traveling between project sites; and visiting customers and prospects within a geographic area.

Here are some common driver roles within various industry sectors:

• Energy: Oilfield technician, well service technician, pipeline construction/services, remote oilfield workers
• Insurance: first responder, disaster recovery agent, claim adjuster
• Building Services: security officer, office service worker
• Construction: Foreman
• Pest Control: pest control technician, service technician
• Healthcare: specimen courier, courier, service tech/engineer
• Retail: store service technician, quick trip delivery service (auto parts, glass repair)

Interested in seeing firsthand what connected vehicle tools can accomplish for your fleet? Email me at ssweeney@wheels.com.