By FMW Staff
July 19, 2023
Data is quickly becoming one of the top commodities for business. Almost any industry can make use of data to identify target customers, streamline their business processes, and optimize their products. The fleet industry is no different, as leading fleets are increasingly turning fleet data into opportunities for growth. Fleets can use data to optimize fleet operations and financials, inform sustainability initiatives, and future proof their fleets. But collecting data and gaining useful insights from it are two different things. That’s where Utilimarc comes in.
Utilimarc is a leader in Business Intelligence solutions for fleet optimization. Their team of expert fleet analysts, technologists, and data scientists make sure your fleet’s data is clean, actionable, and available in one unified platform. With visual dashboards and customized, automated reporting, their platform can use your data to generate actionable insights that enhance operational efficiency, reduce your environmental impact, and maximize capital savings.
We had the chance to interview Gretchen Reese, the Growth Marketing Manager from Utilimarc, and ask her about the company’s one-of-a-kind data solutions.
Tell us a bit about Utilimarc. What does your company do and how does it help fleet managers?
Utilimarc has been around for over two decades now. We work with fleet managers across a variety of different industries to help them clean, standardize, and unify their fleet data into a single environment, based on the pain points that are most prevalent to them. We build custom analytics complete with insights on how to improve the performance of their fleet and be more efficient with their spending.
Our analytics solutions include reports like vehicle replacement and lifecycle, but also rightsizing and sustainability transition plans. For this, our team can look at greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and EV reporting, as well as understanding which vehicles are suited for different fuel types – think CNG or renewable diesel. Other areas might include technician and staffing productivity, total cost of ownership, driver safety, capital savings, or inventory management. There are a lot of different routes that fleets can take when they are pursuing a data analytics solution like ours.
What sort of fleets do you work with? Are they public, private? Where’s your sweet spot as far as size?
We like to meet fleets wherever they’re at. For example, if they’re an incredibly large fleet, and they’ve got an enterprise organization with 90,000 units, that’s great. We can work with them and help them get to the next level of predictive analytics. Or, if they’re a smaller fleet (500 units or less) that wants to start incorporating technology to better understand the metrics that are available through their fleet, we can help them as well.
The fleet teams that we love to work with especially tend to have a lot of data, and either don’t know where or how to start making more sense of what it can tell them. They know that they can streamline their operations by looking at the data, but they need a team and a framework to help them do exactly that. Even if you’re a fleet that is still looking at how you can invest in the technology that gives you data like telematics or FMIS, we can help them too. Our aim is to help fleets move away from the time sink of manual reporting and move towards a place where their data is centralized. They have the reports they need on the schedule they need them, and they’ve got a team of analysts backing them up that’s always in their corner.
Do you have a success story you can share?
One that I love to share is the success that our utility clients have found over the years. We represent a lot of different utilities’ fleet directors and help them with their right-sizing initiatives, as well as streamlining their operations, primarily because they’re both such a costly endeavor. We’ve been extremely successful with these initiatives in the utility space, especially right-sizing fleets’ assets like bucket trucks, digger derricks, and other large vehicles that come at a high capital expense.
One specific example of this is a utilities fleet that has a large presence in the US. We were able to help create a 12% reduction in just one right-sizing analysis for their assets. Though I can’t share the direct numbers with you, the benefits of this cost-saving initiative were substantial. For a bit of context, if you remove even one bucket truck from your fleet that is under-utilized or unnecessary, it makes the business case for an ROI with Utilimarc for 10 years.
What differentiates Utilimarc from the competition?
There are two things that really set us apart from the competition. The first is that we’re a company full of fleet experts. We’re run by fleet analysts, and we were founded in the foundation of fleet data.
The second thing is that we’re not simply a software product. It’s not something that gives you canned reporting that doesn’t have your fleet in mind. We’re an advanced analytics tool and a team. And the team itself is the backbone of your experience working with Utilimarc. If you decide to work with Utilimarc to pursue advanced analytics for your fleet data, what you’re really getting is the tool as well as a team of analysts, data scientists, and data engineers. We’re taking all the data from these fleets that we work with and putting it through our standardized cleansing process. This doesn’t just happen at first ingestion. It’s ongoing, all the time.
We build custom reports for each of our clients. What that means is we’re doing custom calculations and custom mathematics. These are NOT pre-built modules that you just get to select from and get a canned report, and then if you want more, you can make that suggestion and we’ll put it into our roadmap. No, that’s not what we do. Our team collaborates with you to figure what you need from your fleet data in real time, and we’ll build those customized reports for you typically in as little as 24 to 48 hours. We’re fast, we’re nimble, and we care about the success of our clients. We have capabilities that far exceed just any software on its own.
Tell us a little more about your GHG reporting.
I would say one of the coolest things about our reporting is that we’ve basically nailed scope one reporting for greenhouse gas emissions. What that means is the actual emissions directly from the tailpipe. We’ve now begun to work on Scope 2 and 3 emissions, as well – which is incredibly exciting, especially as a lot of organizations have committed to a carbon neutral future.
We partnered with Geotab a long time ago, because they have the richest dataset on EVs, on fueling, and on the other components that are important for a robust and comprehensive GHG emissions report. We’re familiar with the different fueling systems, no problem. We’ve worked with that data for years. We’re comfortable with all the different data sets we need to be in order to confidently provide the analytics in a way that you can successfully glean insights from.
For more information about how to make sure your fleet’s data is available and actionable in a unified platform, Utilimarc can be reached at [email protected], or call 1-866-278-6170