Coencorp Blog

Pay Attention, Or You'll Pay!

I was planning my budget the other day and thinking about how much gas I used for trips to and from work, to do groceries, to the gym, to go on weekend outings with friends and family, and I realized that other than the mileage on my odometer, I didn’t really track where I spent on fuel each week; much less for each month, or year. I suppose if I knew, I’d be a little shocked, and I’d also be a little more careful about what I paid for gas, how I operated my car, and how many trips I made each day. The truth was, I only had a vague idea about my gas spending behavior and I probably wouldn’t even see if my changes made any significant difference or not to my single-car usage. Then I thought about my clients. 

Our previous article discussed the importance of capturing real-time data to feed your fleet management system. However, having loads of raw data flooding in is one thing. Being able to organize and analyze it all in real-time visually is a whole different challenge for most fleet managers. Increasingly, companies and industries demand real-time insights to understand what is happening within their organisations entirely. What are the advantages of real-time data analytics, where are the challenges, and which tools can be used for the real-time processing of live data?

Across industries and markets, we hear the call to real-time data collection and its importance to profitable big data analytics. Companies with fleets to manage have known this for a long time and continue to partner with fleet management system (FMS) suppliers to improve business practices and outcomes. 

One-Size Fits All vs One-Stop Shop 

Implementing a fully integrated fleet management system that answers the challenges of a vast diversity of industries and companies needing them is realizable when the supplier builds its system on these strong values: flexibility, adaptability, scalability, and user-focused functionality. Most companies’ needs vary beyond what combination of equipment and assets they own; they include the very human factors of management styles, objectives, and visions. In reality, one-size-fits-all solutions often fail because no two fleets are exactly alike. Your ideal fleet management solution must be built on an equal understanding of the equipment used and the people using them: the fleet managers and equipment users.

Here are a few critical needs our clients have identified in their industries:

Government, Public Works, and Construction:

• Automated tracking and control of stationary fleet fueling facilities, mobile fuel tanks & deliveries, and remote tanks & generators,
• Maintenance bay management
• Yard access/gates &doors control

Mining:

• Tracking fuel during transportation
• Recording & managing fuel drops at mine sites
• Remote generator management, including real-time capture of fuel tank levels 
• Controlling and tracking fueling transactions at fixed and mobile tanks
• Managing maintenance of various vehicles and equipment (maintenance plans, work orders, parts, labor, etc.)
• Access control (gates, doors, etc.)

Oil & gas:

• Automatic, real-time tracking of fuel in transit
• Automatic, real-time tracking of fuel drops
• Management and control of fleet fueling facilities, fuel depots, mobile tanks, pumps, remote tanks, and remote generators 
• Maintenance bay management

Public Transit:

• Automatically manage the distribution of fuel and other fluids at all maintenance bays           
• Automatically manage inspection bays and lube bays
• Manage the maintenance of vehicles and equipment (work orders, recalls, parts & labor, warranty tracking, etc.)
• Track buses and passenger count in real-time
• Control access to facilities and buildings

Private fleets:

• Automatic fuel management
• Maintenance & work order management
• Vehicle tracking and driver’s logs
• Automatic access control (gates, doors, etc.)

How Can We All Come Together?

While there are some differences across industries, the two points remain consistent: the data collected must be automatic, real-time, and accurate, and the ability to pull reports on the data must be flexible to the needs of the individual company. Whether operating a refinery, or fuel depot, transporting fuel, or providing mobile services in any industry, the cost of fuel, labor, and maintenance are among the highest, and, more importantly, these activities are operationally critical.  They need to be managed accurately with full accountability. It has been a major challenge for fleeted organizations in any industry to manage their operations with technologies incapable of providing automated, seamless, and integrated solutions. 

Where Your Fuel Management System Makes You Money

When discussing the high costs of fleet management, our customers often tell us fuel consumption is on par with expenses related to labor. In fact, they tend to complement each other in transparent and trackable ways. The most obvious is when your fleet increases in size, so do labor and fuel expenses. However, the relational increase isn’t always a one-to-one ratio. The question is why it sometimes seems to increase exponentially.  

WHO IS COENCORP?

Ask their customers for the advantages of working with the Coencorp team, and you will get beautiful stories describing the company's five pillars: Accessibility, Adaptability, Automation, Accountability, and Amalgamation.

These pillars describe more than the services and products developed over the past twenty-seven years; they describe the founders’ values.

Moreover, these five “A”s have driven their vision since the exciting
call for help from their first and oldest client. This client allowed the founders to build everything around their core values: People-centred, Quality Driven, Adaptability Oriented.

Whenever a firm lists its requirements for any system, be it for the management of fuel, maintenance, or real-time tracking of assets in the field, that list typically revolves around two basic ideas: record keeping and control. We want to make sure certain things get done at certain times, some things only happen under specific conditions, and reports exist to account for whatever has already occurred. Spec requirements often specify the exact reports the fleet managers look for and how operations are to be conducted, but they rarely detail how exceptions are to be handled.

Many fleets spend tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars implementing a  vehicle maintenance management system. They pay recurring license fees to use that software to handle crucial maintenance-related areas such as parts, maintenance plans, vehicle recalls, and work orders. However, many of those companies then turn around and act as though all the time and money they spent putting those maintenance systems in place was burning a hole through their pockets!

When people think of fuel management systems (FMS), the first thing that usually comes to mind is some kind of terminal at the pump identifying users and vehicles via cards, key tags, and ID numbers punched on a keypad. In other words, they think of what is mostly the control aspect of an FMS. Although control is an essential dimension of such a system, there needs to be more going on than that.