September 22, 2014

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Editor's Analysis & Top Industry News


Janice Sutton ‘The Global Connected Vehicle — Today and Down the Road’

We were excited to learn that Kevin Moore, vice pres­i­dent of Auto­mo­tive OEM Sales at Tel­o­gis, will be a keynote speaker at NAFA’s Inter­na­tional Fleet Acad­emy. We have inter­viewed Moore sev­eral times for Fleet Man­age­ment Weekly and he is a com­mand­ing speaker.

Moore’s address: “The Global Con­nected Vehi­cle – Today and Down the Road” will speak to how cloud-based loca­tion intel­li­gence soft­ware plat­forms will have a trans­for­ma­tive effect on the way that global busi­nesses opti­mize their mobile assets and crit­i­cal data.

Hurry: Reg­is­ter for NAFA’s Inter­na­tional Fleet Acad­emy by Sep­tem­ber 30th and take advan­tage of early-bird pric­ing! You don’t want to miss this con­fer­ence if your job respon­si­bil­i­ties have expanded out­side of North America!

Jan­ice Sut­ton
Exec­u­tive Editor


GPS Insight logo2 Webinar: Top 10 Ways Busy Professionals Can Be More Organized

This free webi­nar from GPS Insight is intended to pro­vide valu­able busi­ness edu­ca­tion to all fleet man­age­ment pro­fes­sion­als. If you are a busy pro­fes­sional look­ing for new ways to be more orga­nized, then you are invited to attend this infor­ma­tive webi­nar pre­sented by Man­age­ment Con­sul­tant, Bruce Breier. You will learn how to achieve high effec­tive­ness and effi­ciency in your work envi­ron­ment through improved organization.

Pick up tips for per­sonal plan­ning, the impor­tance of a clutter-free work envi­ron­ment, how to man­age daily inter­rup­tions and dis­trac­tions, and more that will help you thrive through imple­ment­ing orga­ni­za­tional best practices.

Tues­day, Sep­tem­ber 22nd at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern.

REGISTER NOW


lori-r-2

VIDEO: Smart Fleet Vehicle Transport

Whether PARS is hired by FMCs or Fleet Man­agers to move vehi­cles, clear com­mu­ni­ca­tion is always key — and Cus­tomer Ser­vice is always excellent.

VIDEO: NAFA's IFA in Orlando
Pratt_Gayle_NAFA IFC
  Takeaways from International Fleet Academy
 

No one per­son or group within a com­pany can actu­ally imple­ment some­thing on a global level. Sup­port needs to be gained from the right communities.


Click here to watch video
VIDEO: Driving Fleet Safety
kinniry-brian
  Safety Needs to Be Personal
 

Smart fleets today are build­ing highly suc­cess­ful safety cul­tures — and they start by mak­ing safety very personal.


Click here to read more



The Fleet Spot


EDI_LogoOnPGETruck PG&E and EDI Unveil Utility Trucks Capable of Shortening or Eliminating Electric Outages

Pacific Gas and Elec­tric Com­pany and Effi­cient Dri­ve­trains Incor­po­rated (EDI) have unveiled two new util­ity trucks, includ­ing the industry’s first elec­tric hybrid dri­ve­train Class 5 truck fea­tur­ing 120 kilo­watts of exportable power capa­ble of pro­vid­ing power to homes and busi­nesses dur­ing outages

The vehi­cles fea­ture the “EDI Drive” plug-in elec­tric hybrid (PHEV) sys­tem, which pro­vides up to 30 miles of all-electric range and an addi­tional 300 miles of range in PHEV mode and an 80% reduc­tion in emis­sions when com­pared to con­ven­tional trucks. In addi­tion, these vehi­cles are the industry’s first to also offer both par­al­lel and series hybrid modes, allow­ing the vehi­cle to max­i­mize fuel effi­ciency in both high­way and in-city dri­ving conditions.

READ MORE to learn about the capabilities

stevie award Wheels Honored with Two Stevie Awards

Wheels, Inc. took home two Amer­i­can Busi­ness Awards (also known as “Ste­vies”) last week.

Wheels’ new pub­lic web­site won a Sil­ver Ste­vie for Best Web Writing/Content, while the company’s Results + per­for­mance man­age­ment method­ol­ogy earned a Bronze Ste­vie in one of the Best New Prod­uct or Ser­vice categories.

“At Wheels, we are com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing our clients with the most advanced ser­vice capa­bil­i­ties, tech­nol­ogy and per­for­mance man­age­ment method­olo­gies,” said Gail Wheeler, Senior Direc­tor of Mar­ket­ing at Wheels. “Over the last year we have com­pleted some very sig­nif­i­cant projects that have helped us con­tinue that ini­tia­tive, and we are extremely grate­ful to the Ste­vie judges for rec­og­niz­ing our hard work.”

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TelematicsUpdate-Atlanta-160-220 Connected Fleets USA 2014 — Atlanta, GA — November 20–21

The scope of fleet con­nec­tiv­ity is broad­en­ing. While fuel effi­ciency, etc. remain at the core – how can these be improved by new con­nec­tiv­ity options such as V2X, autonomous vehi­cles or smart city initiatives?

Con­nected Fleets USA 2014 Con­fer­ence & Exhi­bi­tion (Nov 20 – 21, 2014, Westin Buck­head, Atlanta, GA) will not only dis­cuss advances in tra­di­tional fleet man­age­ment, but also assess these new opportunities.

READ MORE to check out the lat­est agenda and speaker line-up

caltrans Verizon Deploys Fleet Management Solution for Caltrans

Ver­i­zon is deploy­ing a fleet man­age­ment solu­tion for Cal­trans, the Cal­i­for­nia Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion, to enhance the department’s vis­i­bil­ity into the oper­a­tions of its fleet assets.

With deploy­ment to nearly 7,500 state-owned vehi­cles, includ­ing sedans, trucks, snow­plows and portable sig­nage, slated for com­ple­tion by the end of Sep­tem­ber, Cal­trans intends to use the Ver­i­zon Net­work­fleet GPS-based units to assist in the dis­patch of its statewide fleet and improve the department’s over­all fleet asset man­age­ment prac­tices to boost respon­sive­ness, drive effi­ciency and reduce costs. The fleet man­age­ment solu­tion will also enable Cal­trans to auto­mate its man­ual usage reports (called Cartags) cur­rently used by depart­ment employ­ees. Cal­trans antic­i­pates that the automa­tion of employee usage reports alone will yield esti­mated annual sav­ings of 28,000 salary hours, or nearly $500,000.

READ MORE

Fleet Customer Experience  
Jeofrey Bean, Author

Which com­pa­nies are set­ting cus­tomer expe­ri­ence expec­ta­tions for your business?

By Jeofrey Bean

Know­ing which com­pa­nies are set­ting expe­ri­ence expec­ta­tions is more impor­tant than ever. It goes beyond cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion and onto inno­vat­ing the next gen­er­a­tion cus­tomer experience.

Whether on the job, at home or relax­ing on vaca­tion, your present and future cus­tomers are hav­ing expe­ri­ences that impact their expec­ta­tions of you and your busi­ness. Accord­ing to J.D. Power and Asso­ciates Chief Research Offi­cer Gina Pin­gi­tore, “When you have a com­pany that sets the new bar on expec­ta­tions, it sets the bar for every com­pany.” For exam­ple, “Ama­zon fun­da­men­tally changed the way that peo­ple inter­act and expect to inter­act with all online providers.”

You are not in com­pe­ti­tion with Ama­zon, yet part of your busi­ness is online. Why should you care about the Ama­zon cus­tomer expe­ri­ence? Because when peo­ple have expe­ri­ences, they do not sort and com­pare them in neatly orga­nized indus­try, prod­uct or ser­vice cat­e­gories. They will com­pare their online expe­ri­ence with your com­pany to their expe­ri­ence with Amazon.

This is true for the entire cus­tomer expe­ri­ence con­tin­uum. Peo­ple com­pare the inter­ac­tions they have with your mes­sages / promises, peo­ple, processes, prod­ucts and ser­vices to those inter­ac­tions they have already expe­ri­enced. And chances are very good that you are being com­pared to the extremes, the worst and the very best experiences.

READ MORE to learn how many expe­ri­ence lead­ers build a detailed and mean­ing­ful under­stand­ing of cus­tomers from a day-in-the-life perspective.

 
Global Fleet Management  
Kevin Moore, Telogis

There are many aspects of global fleet man­age­ment that can be daunt­ing for the fleet pro­fes­sional. Per­haps the most dif­fi­cult is also the most tan­gi­ble: on an aver­age day, the fleet man­ager could be thou­sands of miles away from the vehi­cles they over­see. Tech­nol­ogy is bridg­ing the gap. Open­ing NAFA’s Inter­na­tional Fleet Acad­emy (IFA), keynote speaker Kevin Moore, Vice Pres­i­dent Auto­mo­tive OEM Sales, Tel­o­gis, Inc. will dis­cuss how telem­at­ics are chang­ing the land­scape for fleet.

Moore will detail how cloud-based loca­tion intel­li­gence soft­ware plat­forms will have a trans­for­ma­tive effect on the way that global busi­nesses opti­mize their mobile assets and crit­i­cal data, and will share his insights relat­ing to inno­va­tion in devel­op­ing action­able infor­ma­tion for fleet tools includ­ing dash­boards, man­ag­ing trends for fuels, safety, dri­ver behav­ior, and vehi­cle usage, dis­as­ter relief strate­gies, and more.

For a lim­ited time, atten­dees who reg­is­ter before Sep­tem­ber 30 can take advan­tage of early-bird pric­ing. More infor­ma­tion is avail­able at: www.nafafleetacademy.org

READ MORE

 
Fleet Driver Safety  

In con­junc­tion with the typ­i­cal Inter­net feed­ing frenzy that goes hand in hand with the announce­ment of each new iPhone, Apple has been cited in count­less head­lines recently after its debut of its new Apple Watch on Sep­tem­ber 9. The so-called “smart­watch” is far from an indus­try first – Sam­sung, Motorola and Peb­ble all have mod­els on the mar­ket, and who can for­get 2003’s Fos­sil Wrist PDA? – but as per usual, Apple’s entry is gar­ner­ing more than its fair share of media attention.

The Apple Watch (“iWatch” to many) has also raised inter­est of a more omi­nous sort from cer­tain reg­u­la­tory bod­ies. Last week, mul­ti­ple auto­mo­tive out­lets in the United King­dom ran sto­ries quot­ing offi­cials from that country’s Depart­ment for Trans­port as say­ing that use of an iWatch while dri­ving would carry the same penalty as use of a mobile phone. For the Brits, then, get­ting nabbed check­ing an alert on one’s wrist might mean the same 100-pound fine (about $160) that was instated last August.

READ MORE




Fleet Trends & Issues


car_trafficMIT-Bred Technology Would Let Cars Help Each Other Avoid Traffic Jams

Researchers at the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy used vir­tual tokens, cell­phones and vehicle-to-vehicle wire­less LANs to build a sys­tem for allo­cat­ing the lim­ited space avail­able on major thor­ough­fares. It doesn’t require any phys­i­cal infra­struc­ture, such as toll­booths, so it could be imple­mented quickly almost any­where, they said.

Instead of using cam­eras or elec­tronic toll­booths by the road­way to detect cars pass­ing a cer­tain point, the MIT sys­tem, called Road­Run­ner, is based on GPS (Global Posi­tion­ing Sys­tem) infor­ma­tion from the driver’s cell­phone in each car. As more cars get con­nected to the Inter­net, the sys­tem may be able to go into the car itself, accord­ing to Jason Gao, a grad­u­ate stu­dent in elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing and com­puter sci­ence who devel­oped the sys­tem with Pro­fes­sor Li-Shiuan Peh.

READ MORE about the new system

Rep DeGette displays GM ignition key and ignition switch on Capitol Hill in WashingtonHouse Dems defend NHTSA: ‘The fault here lies squarely with GM’

Two House Democ­rats crit­i­cized a Repub­li­can report that harshly crit­i­cized the National High­way Traf­fic Safety Admin­is­tra­tion for fail­ing to dis­cover defects in Gen­eral Motors cars linked to at least 19 deaths and 54 crashes.

The 44-page report from the House Energy and Com­merce major­ity staff said the agency suf­fered a series of fail­ures and made “inex­cus­able” mis­takes in fail­ing to dis­cover the GM prob­lem. It ques­tion the agency’s tech­ni­cal com­pe­tence, use of ana­lytic soft­ware, train­ing and focus.

But Henry A. Wax­man, D-Calif., the top Demo­c­rat on the panel, and Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., who is the rank­ing mem­ber of the sub­com­mit­tee that over­sees NHTSA, took issue with some findings.

READ MORE

Iain CarmichaelTusker Adds three New Salary Sacrifice Car Schemes to Growing Portfolio

Tusker, a mar­ket leader in salary sac­ri­fice car schemes, has added three more new car schemes cov­er­ing nearly 10,000 employ­ees to the rapidly grow­ing port­fo­lio it oper­ates in the UK, tak­ing the total num­ber of live schemes to more than 180. (Editor’s note: Salary sac­ri­fice is the inclu­sion of employee ben­e­fits in an employee remu­ner­a­tion pack­age in exchange for giv­ing up part of mon­e­tary salary.)

The three new schemes are with Sandwell Coun­cil which has around 5,000 employ­ees and which went live in June; Calderdale Coun­cil which launched a new low car­bon car scheme to more than 3,600 eli­gi­ble employ­ees; and Oxford City Coun­cil which has 1,200 eli­gi­ble employ­ees and went live last month.

READ MORE

NCSFA 2014Registration Deadline for NCSFA State Fleet Manager’s Workshop

The NCSFA State Fleet Manager’s Work­shop is designed exclu­sively for Gov­ern­ment Fleet Man­age­ment Pro­fes­sion­als to be held in beau­ti­ful Burling­ton, Ver­mont on Lake Cham­plain — Octo­ber 7–9, 2014. Reg­is­tra­tion dead­line Sep­tem­ber 25, 2014.

The NCSFA and the State of Ver­mont are co-hosting this three day inten­sive work­shop. Pre­sen­ters will be state fleet pro­fes­sion­als shar­ing their best prac­tices and pro­gram infor­ma­tion. Work­shop brochure, agenda and reg­is­tra­tion details

Fleet Lifecycle Analyses  

Donlen has released their “Life­cy­cle Cost Man­age­ment: 36-Month ver­sus 60-Month Sedan Life­cy­cle Cost Analy­sis” com­par­ing costs asso­ci­ated with cycling a vehi­cle at 60 months ver­sus the tra­di­tional 36-month cycle.

The analy­sis unveils the life­cy­cle costs asso­ci­ated with extend­ing the cycle times for a typ­i­cal sedan. “This analy­sis com­pares real data based on our Donlen port­fo­lio and the find­ings iden­tify how costs are impacted the longer you hold on to a vehi­cle. Our con­sult­ing team has pub­lished this analy­sis to help fleets under­stand the impli­ca­tions of extend­ing their vehi­cle life­cy­cles,” said Amy Blaine, Vice Pres­i­dent of Con­sult­ing, Ana­lyt­ics and Sus­tain­abil­ity.

READ MORE and down­load the free analysis

 
Fleet Safety Technology  

Pedes­tri­ans some­times wan­der into traf­fic. Imag­ine if their cell phones could alert oncom­ing dri­vers. In a sys­tem being tested by auto-parts sup­plier Denso, com­puter soft­ware in the car would receive the phone sig­nal, ana­lyze speed and direc­tion, and instantly deter­mine if the pedes­trian will cross the car’s path. That cuts down on false warn­ings. “It even can go as far as apply­ing the brakes for you,” said Doua Vang, a Denso engi­neer­ing man­ager.

This life sav­ing tech­nol­ogy, along with four other life and/or time sav­ing tech­nolo­gies, are being shown this week at the Intel­li­gent Trans­port Sys­tems World Con­gress in Detroit.

READ MORE to get the details

 
Employee Retention  

A recent GE Cap­i­tal Fleet Ser­vices sur­vey indi­cates busi­nesses that pro­vide com­pany cars are more likely to retain employ­ees than those that reim­burse per­sonal vehi­cle usage for work pur­poses. Notably, 87 per­cent of cur­rent com­pany car users and 63 per­cent of per­sonal vehi­cle users would not con­sider another com­pany if it did not offer a com­pany vehicle.

“With the impact of not pro­vid­ing a com­pany vehi­cle being felt in both human resources and on the bot­tom line, busi­nesses should eval­u­ate if a company-provided vehi­cle can bet­ter con­tribute to their com­bined cost-saving and employee reten­tion goals.”

READ MORE





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