Today we give special recognition to the fleet managers and some critical partners who contribute to our success. Thanks to these hard-working and strategically essential employees from all our industries, Coencorp has been growing for three decades, building the most comprehensive, fully integrated, customizable, and user-friendly fleet management system available, SM2. To better understand what makes these partners so vital to us, we must look at all they do daily and how their business needs become our primary functions.
Fleet managers are an integral part of the operations of any company requiring mobile assets. They work in a dynamic and challenging environment, often relying on fast decision-making abilities. Their primary focus is to optimize the utilization of assets, ensuring drivers, customers, and company/industry expectations are met and/or exceeded. Fleet managers play a lead role in training, development, and supervision. They are integral for building and maintaining relationships between drivers and various departments within the company. They may rely heavily on experience to interpret data on their assets but always need accurate data to make good decisions. It’s the same as software: junk in, junk out!
A Mile in Their Shoes: Breaking Down a Typical Fleet Manager’s Day
An average of 20% of the day is spent building and maintaining relationships with drivers and asset users. Building professional relationships that foster open communication and trust can improve a driver’s work experience, often enhancing trainability, reliability, and performance. This plays intensely into the compensation of the employees, which affects work experience/satisfaction/performance, and on and on it goes.
About 30% of the day is spent on compliance with various standards/rules/laws. Fleet managers need all the tools available to them to make this work. A reliable FMS is critical to freeing up the time needed for the more human aspects of managing their fleet, discussed in the previous paragraph.
Operations take up the second half of the day, and a fleet manager’s top priority is optimizing the utilization of the drivers and vehicles. Dispatching is impacted by many factors, including scheduling corrective and preventative maintenance on their trucks that ensure the highest possible utilization. Fleet managers must also monitor driver schedules to confirm they will arrive at their destinations on time and with the most minor consumption possible. These considerations also impact customer satisfaction. Fleet managers and drivers must work together to avoid and redress any potential delays that arise while on the road to prevent a late delivery or incidents. Combined with technological tools like vehicle telemetry, mobile data, and/or onboard data collection equipment makes this process much more manageable. Having that data directed in real-time to the FMS makes them superstars.
All That and a Side of Fries: What Makes a Good Fleet Manager?
Patience – Fleet managers accept delays and uncertainty but must be able to make fast changes to fix them before they dramatically impact their clients. Although it is a fast-paced position, sometimes there are factors out of their control, and they must remain patient and work towards finding a viable solution. Live data streaming from the assets via an Equipment Tracking Unit (ETU) enhances the communication between the driver and manager and allows them to work as a team to deliver solutions to most challenges.
Multi-Tasking – They must balance and prioritize various tasks under tight timelines. Often needing a user-friendly and dynamic dashboard to assess conditions and make fast decisions. The SM2 interfaces are highly customizable to offer the most essential information defined as a priority to the fleet manager using it, giving them the outstanding facility to multitask.
Good Listener – Transportation issues are often complex and hard to understand, so fleet managers need to be active listeners when following up with drivers about problems coming into them in real time. A good listener may be able to absorb more information and quickly identify the nature of the problem, but add a clear FMS dashboard adapted to reflect the priority needs of your company, and you will start getting ahead of the issues.
Problem Solver – A fleet manager's responsibility is to find creative and efficient solutions to predictable problems common in transportation. Coencorp sees these traits as the core attributes of its partners and has designed the SM2 functions to become the ultimate problem-solving tool.
Organized – Organization is what distinguishes successful fleet managers and ensures all of their duties and responsibilities are completed promptly. The need for a fleet management system that gives them the best organization is a must-have. Every fleet manager knows what is needed for their fleet, and we thrive on customizing our approach to fit your specific needs. Then we integrate it into the modules to provide you with easy access to all you need to optimize the operation of your fleet.
Confident – Effective fleet managers have confidence in their decision-making ability when they access real-time and accurate data on their assets. Mobile data collection tools, like Coencorp’s VDU, fulfil this need. With this, they become industry leaders and more profitable contributors to their shareholders.
What is the most difficult challenge Fleet Managers face?
Fleet managers work under very tight timelines. They must make decisions on the fly and evaluate many alternatives to minimize costly mistakes.
For example, if a vehicle breaks down on route for whatever reason, it may create cascading operational delays. Fleet managers battle time constraints but must diligently balance time to evaluate and implement the best action for their business and drivers. These time constraints impact decisions related to fuel consumption, maintenance of assets, and labour expenses. They need a tool like our SM2 fleet management system to give them a complete view of their business's aspects.
Do an internet search across various industries, and you will easily find widespread challenges. We’ve heard the same from our clients for the last thirty years. We have enjoyed giving them solutions beyond their expectations because of our dedication to adapting components and integrating modules under a complete solution for each unique client. The most common issues are an interrelated combination of fuel consumption, optimal engine functionality, real-time data collection, and user behaviours. The most common requests revolve around accurate data collection, user-friendly dashboards, easy reporting tools, and a growing need for predictive business intelligence. Progressive fleet management systems like Coencorp’s SM2 solve these most common challenges.
Please visit our other articles for additional insights into some of the solutions we’ve developed, or contact our excellent support team and share your challenges with us. We would love to chat!