What’s your recipe for fleet success?
Your business has fleet management and technology solutions in place to help achieve organizational goals. These objectives likely include budget, productivity, profits, customer satisfaction, and so forth. But do you know which ingredients were used to whip up your company’s current fleet approach?
Hopefully the recipe for your fleet’s success was customized to complement your company’s appetite in terms of configuration and priorities. An ingredient check may be in order to ensure your structure is geared for optimal performance.
Does your fleet have the fundamental systems and policies in place to operate at a best practices level? Is your business effectively managing the processes to execute on those systems and policies?
If you suspect the answer is “no”, it’s time to peek behind the kitchen door. You might see what looks like a mess at first glance, but you’ll know exactly how things have been cooked up—including which stakeholders are stirring the pot and what’s been left on the floor unconsidered. The common phrase, “how the sausage gets made” applies perfectly to this process. While your stakeholders are more concerned with the final fleet dinner plate rather than how you prepared it, what happens in the kitchen can make or break their entire experience.
Consider these questions that ARI asks fleets when reviewing their current fleet approach. Your answers can help determine if you’re aligned with your organization’s structure and needs.
INGREDIENT TYPE: BUY (the meat)
- Financial Decisions
- Is your fleet overseen by one team who enforces a single policy and uniform processes across the board, or do fleet management practices vary by region or leader?
- Do you annually review and update your fleet management roadmap, or does planning occur on a more reactive basis?
- Have you consolidated to a single fleet management company or do you have more than one company managing various aspects of your fleet?
- What department does fleet report to – Finance? HR? Operations? Procurement? Risk/Safety? Sales? Itself? All of the above?
- How much of your daily workload is spent on fleet?
- Supply Chain
- Are your vehicle specs and upfits standardized based on job function and/or business need? Do you review your selector annually to ensure the vehicles are still meeting your priorities for budget and performance?
- How many vehicles do you get from dealer stock? Have you fully explored opportunities for OEM incentives?
INGREDIENT TYPE: DRIVE (The breadcrumbs)
- Connected Vehicles
- Do you have telematics devices in some or all of your vehicles to track driver behavior, vehicle performance, optimization, etc.? What was the primary reason for this decision?
- Are you able to see all of your vehicles and analyze all of your fleet expenses in one resource, or do you need to piece together data from various systems to achieve a consolidated perspective?
- Driver Safety
- Do you run Motor Vehicle Reports (MVRs) each time you hire a driver and then again annually? Do you then assign driver training based on the MVR?
- Do you have a real-time method of assessing driver risk and assigning relevant training?
INGREDIENT TYPE: SERVICE (the spices)
- Cost Containment
- Do you have controlled authorization of maintenance and repairs?
- Do you control fuel expenses with card restrictions and fraud detection?
- Do you allow employees to use company vehicles for personal use? If so, do you collect a personal use charge?
- Vehicle Downtime
- Do you coordinate new vehicle orders with OEM production schedules to ensure delivery when you need them?
- Do you have someone checking maintenance purchase orders for excessive or redundant work on the same vehicles that takes them off the road?
INGREDIENT TYPE: SELL (the flavorings)
- Capital Forecasting
- Do you enforce a formal vehicle replacement policy? What are the criteria you use for replacement decisions (vehicle selector, driving pattern, operation, etc.)?
- Do you maintain a consistent annual budget for vehicle replacements?
- Vehicle Remarketing
- What index do you use to measure your used vehicle sales performance?
- Do you allow employees to purchase used company vehicles?
With the right tools and partner, you can identify opportunities to increase fleet performance level or confirm where your fleet has the necessary processes and policies in place to operate at best practice level.
ARI can help you evaluate your fundamental fleet structure to ensure you’re optimizing efficiencies, controlling costs and mitigating risk. Let’s get cooking!
YOUR FLEET IS AN INVESTMENT. AND IT’S TIME IT PAID OFF.
Explore our suite of solutions videos at FleetIsAnInvestment.com
