7 Factors Impacting Your Fleet Performance

As a manager of a fully established or growing fleet of vehicles and drivers, there is no shortage of tasks on your plate. Whether maintaining day-to-day routing schedules, developing situational policies and procedures, or maximizing fleet productivity levels – all of it can quickly overwhelm even the most seasoned fleet management professionals.

Amplifying the daily challenge of staying on task is the growing pressure felt in every industry to maximize fleet performance and improve overall output. For many, this can be a monumental assignment that is hard to approach, and knowing where to even begin can prove to be just as tricky. 

Thankfully, we’ve taken much of the guesswork out of this process by identifying seven contributing factors that could be impacting your fleet’s performance and some progressive steps you can take to improve them quickly.

1. Lack of Fleet Visibility

An essential aspect of maximizing fleet performance is visibility. Proper asset management and performance optimization begin by knowing where your vehicles and drivers are at all times. However, it’s important to note that “visibility” means much more than investing in additional dispatching resources and enforcing better driver communication.

Telematics solutions make it easier than ever before to maintain a unified view of driver and vehicle asset locations while tracking movements in real-time through GPS devices and software. There are near-limitless uses of this technology when it comes to fleet performance and sustainability improvement. Some of these use cases include automated route assessment and optimization, productivity monitoring, vehicle theft recovery, and many others.

2. Poor Safety Enforcement

Driver safety should be a primary focus in every fleet manager’s playbook.Taking active steps to establish strict compliance standards for your employees ensures their safety and protects the organization in several ways. Still, while almost all fleet managers recognize the importance of safety compliance adherence and following best practices, effectively and consistently enforcing those standards over time is no easy feat. 

However, fleet managers can use many tools and solutions to consistently drive safety enforcement standards across the entire organization while still supporting scale and automation. Fleet management software solutions like Derive VQ empower fleet managers with increased control over their driver behavior by utilizing safety enforcement protocols such as cell blocking, seatbelt compliance, and speed governing technologies. 

3. Inadequate Performance Data 

When it comes to performance optimization, you can’t act on the information you don’t have. And this is an issue that continues to plague many fleet managers as they look to make incremental improvements in their operations. When tasked with diagnosing productivity and profitability issues across the fleet, the only way to properly do so is by relying on key performance metrics that present actionable information to the appropriate groups.

Gathering this data accurately and consistently requires the use of intelligent digitized solutions that give you complete visibility into your fleet’s operations. By deploying automated processes that take the guesswork out of data analysis, fleet management solutions present real-time measurable business insights that give fleet managers full transparency into vehicle performance, driver safety compliance, fuel consumption, and more.

4. Factory Vehicle Calibrations

Of course, a major component of your fleet’s performance is the quality of the vehicles you choose to operate. Most fleet managers regularly evaluate their vehicles’ long-term sustainability and carefully consider fuel economy, safety, and overall performance when choosing suitable vehicle manufacturer partners. However, regardless of the make and model of your vehicle, did you know that factory conventional vehicle calibrations could be costing your business 6-12% more in fuel costs than you need to pay?

Engine optimization solutions like VQ Efficiency help fleet managers unlock their vehicles’ hidden potential by using OBD-II engine calibration tools to change their factory performance capabilities. VQ Efficiency uses custom-designed calibrations to analyze, program, and optimize performance in just 10-15 minutes and has been proven to improve fuel efficiency, enhance vehicle safety, and extend vehicle life. Engine optimization solutions are so effective in the majority of fleet applications that businesses who invest in them as part of their performance optimization strategy see a 100% ROI within their first month of implementation. 

5. No Preventative Maintenance Programs

Regardless of your fleet’s size, a proactive versus a reactive approach to vehicle maintenance is a critical factor in maximizing the lifespan of your mobile assets. However, this can be challenging and counter-productive to an organization’s overall output. So how do you strike the right balance?

Digitizing your asset management approach is typically a great way to ensure your preventative maintenance program is well-organized and executed effectively. By combining real-time vehicle visibility and performance optimization with automated scheduling notifications and maintenance reminders, you and your drivers can have complete transparency when planning for necessary downtime and reprioritizing tasks accordingly. Proactive maintenance planning through digitized fleet management solutions can go a long way in reducing overall spending and significantly improving sustainability efforts. 

6. Insufficient Route Planning

More times than not, a significant contributor to increased fuel spending and declining fleet productivity levels is insufficient route planning. As a fleet manager operating in today’s logistics landscape, there is no shortage of challenges in effective route optimization. Ever since early 2020, there has been a notable increase in demand for mobile workforces, transportation services, and other logistics needs that have congested the roadways, significantly impacting fleets’ performance.

Telematics can play an essential part in helping you optimize your driver’s routes so that they are designed to maximize productivity and minimize unnecessary downtime in between locations. More than that, however, when combining telematics with optimal vehicle calibrations and a fully transparent fleet management solution, fleet managers get more visibility into their fleet’s driving behavior. This can be invaluable for recognizing costly patterns and gives actionable insight into how they can make more economical decisions in their route planning. 

7. Legacy Systems and fleet performance Processes

Considering the levels of disruption that every industry around the globe has faced in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, it’s no surprise that many organizations are still plagued with legacy systems and processes that can take a major toll on overall productivity levels and administrative efficiencies. Fleet management is no exception.

Luckily, there are now multiple digitized solutions that fleet managers can use to unlock their vehicles and drivers’ full potential. The digitization of fleet management systems and processes and the efficiency and cost-savings benefits they provide give fleet managers the valuable time they need to manage other mission-critical aspects of their department.

Optimizing your fleet for better output, reduced spending, and improved safety is no easy task. However, by recognizing these seven factors that could be impacting your fleet’s performance and proactively addressing these issues as they arise, you’ll be on your way to establishing a highly productive and scalable arm of your business operations.

To see how a comprehensive fleet management solution can improve your fleet’s overall performance, contact Derive Systems today.