What is Fleet Management?
Fleet management refers to how a company oversees its transportation services in an effort to reduce/control costs, minimize risks, and maximize productivity.
Whether the fleet is the primary or ancillary aspect of a business, the transportation of goods and services can be both risky and costly. That’s why even a minor improvement in the fleet management process can go a long way.
What’s Involved in the Fleet Management Process?
Fleet management is a broad term that encompasses many aspects and moving parts of procedures.
Let’s look at the main components involved in protecting a company’s fleet:
Vehicle Acquisition
This refers to how a company purchases or rents its vehicles. A company must not only locate the right vehicles for the job, but they also must ensure that the financials fit within the budget.
Maintenance and Repairs
Maintenance and repairs are a constant need when having an array of vehicles to take care of. Companies can be proactive and properly maintain their fleet to minimize issues.
Fuel Management
Fuel management is a major aspect of fleet management because it is a major cost of running a fleet. The goal is to reduce mileage to have more efficient vehicles, thereby lowering overall costs.
Driver Management
Driver management involves adequate training and oversight to ensure drivers are compliant with regulations and also taking good personal care of themselves to avoid accidents and/or injuries.
Route Planning and Optimization
Route planning systems can be used to schedule delivery routes in an effort to save time, minimize fuel consumption, and optimize productivity.
Tracking and Monitoring
GPS tracking tools are used to make sure that drivers stay on their optimized path and within their territories.
As you can see, there are a lot of considerations to be made within the fleet management process. Every company approaches these responsibilities in their own ways, but one thing is for certain– the use of technology can be a major advantage in this field. We’re going to explore why this is the case.
Challenges of Traditional Fleet Management
Without the aid of software and tools, fleet managers are left in what feels like the stone ages. When they have to do their work by hand and across disparate spreadsheets, there is a lot of time that is wasted.
Along with the inefficient use of time is the fact that the work is cumbersome by nature, which can lead to unsatisfied employees. Manual and traditional fleet management suffers from:
- A heavy load of paperwork
- Inefficient communication and inability to collaborate
- Lack of real-time data to make informed decisions and proactively address issues
- Compliance risks
- Higher costs and risks
How Can AI Help Improve Fleet Management?
With any vehicle on the road, whether it’s for commercial or personal use, safety has to be the most important and primary concern. Fleet management is no different, and when it comes to businesses, the fleet management process has its costs tied to it.
Artificial intelligence, or AI, can be a massive help to alleviate many of the challenges of manual fleet management. Take for example the following capabilities:
Predictive Maintenance
Predictive maintenance leverages historical data to boost fleet efficiency. Fleet managers gain access to information that allows them to make decisions now that will affect the future.
Intelligent Routing
Intelligent routing also uses data to make decisions about route planning. It pulls real-time traffic information, advanced mapping, and historical information to minimize fuel efficiency and time to design the best routes for drivers and their vehicles to take.
Driver Behavior Monitoring
Driver behavior monitoring systems offer transparency for companies to understand the risks that their drivers are facing on the road. Monitoring systems, sensors, and cameras may be used to better understand how drivers are faring on the road. This way, fleet managers can get a sense of behaviors such as: sudden braking or acceleration to optimize training opportunities that lead to improved driving.
Fuel Optimization
AI can be applied to automatically collect data from vehicles about fuel consumption, taking the risk of human error out of the equation. Real-time fuel monitoring grants fleet managers insights as to how the vehicles are consuming fuel so that they can make timely decisions and adjustments as needed.
Automated Reporting and Analytics
Last but not least, automated reporting and analytics (see “fleet reporting“) provides a deeper understanding of how drivers and vehicles are performing. With data in hand, fleet managers can make data-driven decisions, rather than having to rely on guesswork or trial and error.
How Can Speech Automation in Fleet Management Be Helpful?
We all know that the rule of any road is to keep your eyes on the road. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Commission (NHTSA), three main types of distraction negatively impact drivers, namely: visual (eyes off the road), manual (hands of the wheel), and cognitive (taking your mind off driving). All of these may result in accidents, and in the worst cases, death.
That’s why when it comes to the fleet management process and driver’s safety, speech recognition technology is truly a blessing in disguise.
Speech-enabled technology, such as what aiOla provides, grants many benefits in the realm of fleet management, especially when it comes to safety. It allows drivers, maintenance crew, and managers to perform hands-free actions, whether it be to communicate, complete checklists, or share information. Voice-enabled data entry and reporting can be used to prevent manual data-entry, as well. This means that drivers can keep their eyes, hand, and mind on the road.
With a solution like aiOla, fleet management teams benefit from increased safety, efficiency, and collaboration.
A Real-World Example
To get a sense of how AI, specifically aiOla’s speech-enabled technology, can aid in fleet management, it’s time to review a success story from a global shipping courier that provides transportation, brokerage services, and trade across hundreds of countries.
The company was stuck spending 15 minutes per vehicle to conduct pre-operational truck inspections before their drivers could hit the road. The manual and paper-based checklists also resulted in delayed issue resolution for maintenance teams.
Once they implemented aiOla, without having to change their process or workflow at all, they were able to realize an 85% time savings by reducing each pre-operational inspection to just 60 seconds per vehicle. This also led to a 70% reduction in safety incidents for the company!
Closing Thoughts
No matter what your company’s fleet management process consists of, AI and technology can help to streamline these critical workflows. Since fleet management is filled with many pertinent responsibilities and constantly changing environments, it only makes sense to have access to real-time data and information that can boost productivity and safety.
