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 major difference or not to my single car usage. Then I thought about my clients. 

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. 

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 clear 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.  

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.