May 19, 2014
Editor's Analysis & Top Industry News


Sutton_Janice Get Smart, Cut Costs

We were intrigued by some of the sta­tis­tics cited in the GE Cap­i­tal Fleet Ser­vices sur­vey of fleet man­agers con­ducted at the recent NAFA I&E. For instance, 35% of the respon­dents named safety their main con­cern, but 67% said that the main focus of their company’s exec­u­tive lead­er­ship is achiev­ing cost sav­ings. These goals appear to be at cross-purposes, but today’s fleet pro­fes­sional has a vari­ety of tech­nol­ogy tools to address the dual challenges.

Impor­tantly, we also have access to out­stand­ing indus­try events that offer edu­ca­tional ses­sions and net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to keep our skills up to the minute. Here are a few com­ing up in the next few months:

Jan­ice Sut­ton
Exec­u­tive Editor


map-overlay Integrate All Fleet Data into One Portal

When you are in the mar­ket to imple­ment GPS track­ing soft­ware into your fleet busi­ness, there are many things to con­sider – fea­tures, user friendly plat­forms, cus­tomiza­tion capa­bil­ity, and also inte­gra­tion. Inte­gra­tion, the process of com­bin­ing indi­vid­ual com­put­ing sys­tems into a uni­fied whole, is ben­e­fi­cial because it pro­vides a way to look at all aspects of fleet oper­a­tions from one plat­form. Bring­ing all this infor­ma­tion together will pro­vide the best insight into all fleet activ­ity and will increase the effi­ciency of your busi­ness oper­a­tions overall.

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VIDEO: The Global Fleet World Keeps Getting Smaller

It’s a very excit­ing time glob­ally in the fleet busi­ness! Janis Chris­tensen from Mer­cury Asso­ciates notes big inter­est in Best Prac­tices in fleet in far-ranging places, from Bul­garia to Roma­nia to Dubai to Aus­tralia and beyond…

VIDEO: Better Drivers, Lower Costs
kavanagh-bernie
  Prescriptive Data Drives Positive Outcomes
 

Hav­ing data that’s not just reac­tive, not just pre­dic­tive — but actu­ally pre­scrip­tive — can lead to improve­ments in dri­ver behav­ior, and to lower oper­at­ing costs.


Click here to watch video
VIDEO: Predicting Future Costs
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  The Power of Predictive Analytics
 

Fleet clients are look­ing more and more at pre­dic­tive ana­lyt­ics to fore­cast future costs when it comes to main­te­nance, fuel spend, and more.


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The Fleet Spot


Scott Burrows Scott Burrows, Keynote Speaker at AFLA Conference

Scott Bur­rows is an expert on trans­for­ma­tional change and uses his inspi­ra­tional life story to encour­age every­one to stand up to their chal­lenges. He will speak on his expe­ri­ences at the upcom­ing upcom­ing annual con­fer­ence of the Auto­mo­tive Fleet and Leas­ing Asso­ci­a­tion (AFLA), Sep­tem­ber 7–10, 2014, at the M Resort & Spa Casino in Las Vegas, Nev.

Dur­ing the AFLA con­fer­ence, Bur­rows will use his prin­ci­ples of vision, mind­set, and grit to dis­play how cutting-edge lead­er­ship strate­gies will ben­e­fit your entire company.

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Weldon Long Weldon Long, Keynote Speaker at AFLA Conference

Wel­don Long, suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neur, sales expert, and New York Times best-selling author, has been selected as a keynote speaker for the upcom­ing annual con­fer­ence of the Auto­mo­tive Fleet and Leas­ing Asso­ci­a­tion (AFLA), Sep­tem­ber 7–10, 2014, at the M Resort & Spa Casino in Las Vegas, Nev.

Long has helped hun­dreds of com­pa­nies improve their sales results, but it hasn’t always been easy.

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Frank Memolo Frank Memolo Joins PARS as NE Regional Sales Manager

Frank Mem­olo has joined PARS, Pro­fes­sional Auto­mo­tive Relo­ca­tion Ser­vices, Inc., as North­east Regional Sales Man­ager. Mem­olo will sup­port com­pa­nies and any orga­ni­za­tion requir­ing vehi­cle trans­porta­tion and logis­tics ser­vices in the Mid-Atlantic and New Eng­land areas.

Pre­vi­ously, Mem­olo was Fleet Man­ager for Pana­sonic Cor­po­ra­tion of North Amer­ica where he worked for 28 years. He was respon­si­ble for their 850+ vehi­cles located in the U.S.

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Fleet Software Solutions  

At last month’s NAFA I&E, we caught up with Jan Bouck­aert, Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Man­ager at Belgium-based soft­ware solu­tions com­pany, Sofico. They have an inter­est­ing value propo­si­tion for fleet leas­ing com­pa­nies, many of whom may have devel­oped their ERP sys­tem some 20 to 30 years ago, prior the dawn of the Inter­net. Their soft­ware prod­uct, Miles, was devel­oped between 2001 and 2004, so it is fully inte­grated and based on open stan­dards and the most recent technologies.

Sofico has enjoyed great suc­cess in many parts of the world, most recently selected to imple­ment their soft­ware solu­tions at one of Japan’s largest fleet leas­ing com­pa­nies, Ichi­nen. Bouck­aert tells us that they have their first U.S. client and are seek­ing to gain insight into the U.S. mar­ket in order to ‘Amer­i­can­ize’ their sys­tem and expand their pres­ence here.

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Successful Fleet Management  

By Mike Sheldrick, Senior Edi­tor, Fleet Man­age­ment Weekly

Dri­ver safety is the top pri­or­ity of fleet man­agers, accord­ing to a GE Cap­i­tal Fleet Ser­vices sur­vey con­ducted at last month’s NAFA I&E. Thirty-five per­cent of fleet man­agers iden­ti­fied safety as their main con­cern, ahead of cost-saving goals (27%), and work­force pro­duc­tiv­ity (22%). Dri­ver safety was also fleet man­agers’ top con­cern at the 2013 NAFA I&E.

Nev­er­the­less, 62% of those sur­veyed said that the main focus of their company’s exec­u­tive (C-suite) lead­er­ship is achiev­ing cost sav­ings. The sur­vey revealed a num­ber of tac­tics to man­age costs: 43% per­cent of respon­dents cited vehi­cle pur­chas­ing as the great­est oppor­tu­nity for sav­ings, fol­lowed by man­ag­ing main­te­nance expenses (32%), and acti­vat­ing telem­at­ics and ana­lyt­ics solu­tions (22%).

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Fleet Trends & Issues


ARI logo from videoARI Hosted Fourth Annual Utility Fleet Forum

ARI proudly hosted its fourth annual Util­ity Fleet Forum March 25 – 27 in Grapevine, Texas. Atten­dees included fleet man­agers and per­son­nel from some of North America’s lead­ing util­i­ties as well as ARI’s team of util­ity fleet specialists.

“To help ensure atten­dees have a truly valu­able expe­ri­ence, we sur­vey guests prior to the forum to struc­ture an agenda that includes top­ics and learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties that they have iden­ti­fied as crit­i­cal areas of focus,” said Bill Doman, depart­ment head, sales sup­port for ARI.

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older driverUnderstanding Older Drivers

The major­ity of older peo­ple are active dri­vers today. In 2011, well over 86 per­cent of peo­ple 65 and older were dri­vers. That means that more than one out of six dri­vers on the road in the United States are 65 and older. Most older peo­ple are safe dri­vers, but as they age they may expe­ri­ence more crashes and suf­fer higher injury and fatal­ity risks.

The AAA Foun­da­tion has embarked on a long-term study of older dri­vers that aims to answer key ques­tions about med­ical con­di­tions, med­ica­tion usage, travel behav­iors, and mobil­ity options for seniors who no longer drive.

READ MORE and learn about the key find­ing of the study.

Tire_Tread_Penny_Test_250TireWise Consumer Education Campaign Launched by NHTSA

The U.S. Depart­ment of Transportation’s National High­way Traf­fic Safety Admin­is­tra­tion (NHTSA) launched its Tire­Wise cam­paign that pro­vides con­sumers and retail­ers with essen­tial infor­ma­tion about choos­ing and car­ing for tires. NHTSA esti­mates that each year there are almost 200 fatal­i­ties as a result of tire-related crashes, and approx­i­mately 11,000 tire-related crashes total.

“Safety is our top pri­or­ity and fol­low­ing these sim­ple guide­lines will help pre­vent need­less deaths and injuries every year,” said U.S. Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Anthony Foxx. “This cam­paign will help con­sumers make more informed choices every step of the way when it comes to choos­ing and car­ing for their tires – keep­ing them safer and sav­ing them money at the same time.”

READ MORE and get the key advice and infor­ma­tion included in the Tire­Wise campaign

Toyota RAV4 EVToyota Pulling the Plug on RAV4-EV

Toy­ota is pulling the plug on the RAV4-EV, the battery-electric ver­sion of the soft-roader it intro­duced two years ago with the help of elec­tric vehi­cle start-up Tesla Motors.

This year’s phase-out of the RAV4-EV comes as the Japan­ese giant gets ready to launch its new hydrogen-powered FCV, which made its debut at the Tokyo Motor Show last autumn. While it has been the most suc­cess­ful man­u­fac­turer of con­ven­tional hybrids, Toy­ota has repeat­edly expressed its con­cerns about pure battery-electric vehi­cles rely­ing on advanced lithium-ion batteries.

The move also comes as Tesla gets ready to launch its own, first battery-electric SUV, the Model X due to mar­ket some­time in 2015.

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Fleet Management Awards  

Wheels has been named a final­ist in three “Ste­vie” Amer­i­can Busi­ness Award cat­e­gories for 2014.

Wheels’ new pub­lic web­site made the short­list for Best Web Writing/Content, while the company’s Results + per­for­mance man­age­ment method­ol­ogy received was nom­i­nated in one of the Best New Prod­uct or Ser­vice cat­e­gories. The Wheels Client Ana­lyt­ics group was also named a final­ist for Sup­port Team of the Year. Wheels will ulti­mately win a Gold, Sil­ver, or Bronze Ste­vie in each cat­e­gory. Last year, Wheels com­pleted an exten­sive ren­o­va­tion of its pub­lic web­site – www.wheels.com. The new site fea­tures enhanced nav­i­ga­tion, con­tent and graph­ics designed to pro­vide enhanced lev­els of usability.

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Technology & Sustainability  

Tech­nol­ogy is enabling improve­ments in pro­duc­tion and fuel effi­ciency, but also encour­ag­ing us to drive more sus­tain­ably and change the way we use and think about the car.

Our pas­sion for autonomous mobil­ity has seen global car pro­duc­tion rise remorse­lessly from 38 mil­lion in 1997 to more than 65 mil­lion in 2013, accord­ing to the Inter­na­tional Organ­i­sa­tion of Motor Vehi­cle Man­u­fac­tur­ers (OICA), with all the pol­lu­tion, cli­mate change and health impli­ca­tions that has entailed.

While Euro­pean pro­duc­tion may have stag­nated, emerg­ing mar­kets such as China and India are boom­ing, as newly afflu­ent middle-classes embrace the car as a sym­bol of mate­r­ial suc­cess. World­wide, there are now more than 830 mil­lion cars on the road, forc­ing gov­ern­ments to impose more strin­gent pol­lu­tion emis­sion stan­dards on new cars.

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Driving the Global Fleet  

As the mar­ket for elec­tric cars accel­er­ates, the exec­u­tive board of direc­tors at UK con­tract hire and salary sac­ri­fice provider, Tusker, have all taken deliv­ery of new elec­tric vehi­cles as their com­pany cars.

This ini­tia­tive comes at the same time as Tusker itself has seen an upsurge in orders for EVs, with an incred­i­ble 250% increase in EV orders since pro­mot­ing them to cus­tomers of its award-winning SalarySacrifice4Cars (SS4C) scheme over the last four months.

READ MORE





Fleet Management Resources 
AmeriFleet
Offering a nationwide vehicle delivery and relocation service; serving the corporate and commercial fleet industry.
LeasePlan
LeasePlan is the world's leading high-touch service provider for vehicle leasing and fleet management.
PHH
Customizing global fleet management to achieve your goals.
ARI
Driven fleet professionals. Driving results.
NAFA
NAFA is the association for the diverse vehicle fleet management profession regardless of organizational type, geographic location, or fleet composition.
The CEI Group Inc.
North America's largest accident management and fleet driver safety company.
GPS Insight
GPS Insight offers GPS tracking solutions to meet your organization's unique requirements and challenges.
PARS
PARS' mission is to provide you with high-quality service at competitive prices for all of your transportation needs.