By Jim Perkins, Director of Shell Fleet Solutions USA
March 13, 2024
Please note: this is an excerpt. To read the full article, see link below.
Fleet operators are drinking data from a firehose. From location and route metrics to data around refueling and recharging, the typical operator has thousands of inputs pouring in each day from their collective vehicles. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed.
The prospect of analyzing all this data, or even just part of it, threatens to overload an already high administrative burden. Nearly a quarter of fleet managers say they spend half their day working on spreadsheets, with nearly two in five (37%) worried that their tabulations allow too much room for mistakes, according to Vimcar’s Fleet Administrative Survey.
Operators need to spend less time staring down mountains of data and more time drilling into actionable insights to aid decision-making. Fortunately, the tools to help are hidden in plain sight.
Turning Data into Action
Take fuel cards, for example. Popular for their valuable gas discounts, these ubiquitous products drove a $723 billion global market in 2022, per Strait Research. But many operators may not know that fuel savings are just one benefit of their fuel cards. The data that fuel cards collect – and the related services they tap into – can also help those operators make actionable decisions that could impact their bottom line.
More specifically, fuel cards allow operators to identify the specific fuel expenditures per vehicle and driver. Operators can view built-in reports detailing all aspects of fueling activity, set limits that automatically kick in for card users, and save time on receipt requisitioning by streamlining data from the pump. Tapping into these ready-made solutions can help managers not just optimize their fleetwide fuel consumption but also help control misuse and key in on other inefficiencies.
In many cases, operators already have these capabilities at their fingertips. They just need to leverage the full extent of the tools they’ve already signed up for.
To read the full article, click here.
