ARI brought together more than four dozen industry leaders at its annual Energy Fleet Forum held recently at the Westchase Marriott in Houston. A keynote presentation at the day-long session was made by Colin Dover, senior director of SAP’s Platform and Analytics Center for Excellence. Dover explored energy management issues including the latest innovations in fleet-related technology and how the advances will affect fleets working in the energy, gas, and oil sectors. Other sessions throughout the day focused on energy fleet benchmarking, alternative fuels, maintenance, cost reduction strategies, licensing, and compliance. Energy fleets have been most concerned lately about reducing maintenance costs. Other top concerns included managing fuel spend, the development and enforcement of a driver policy, data integrity and reporting issues, and fleet right-sizing.
These top concerns came from a pre-forum survey sent to invitees, along with information gathered from client interviews and ARI’s own fleet database. The survey focused on policies and procedures, and covered everything from fleet administration, upfitting, maintenance, fuel use, violations, accidents and repairs, driver’s policies and telematics.