4 Benefits Fleet Tracking Systems Provide To Government Fleets

In an era where every dollar of spend is scrutinised and budgets have become tighter than ever, running a government fleet is challenging. Not only are you expected to do more with less, but you need to demonstrate that you are doing it well and maintaining a safe and sustainable fleet while you’re at it. You may even be required to comply with standards that don’t apply to the private sector. Sound familiar?

To juggle these demands, you need a clearer picture of what’s happening on the road and out in the field. A GPS fleet tracking system gives you valuable insights into your driver behaviour and vehicle use. Overall you get a new level of insight into the operation, meaning you can make the right decisions, quicker and more effective. What if you could organise your drivers more efficiently and stay on top of on-going operation costs? With the right tools, your fleet can continue to set the standard.

Maximise your budgets

Delivering the best possible public service doesn’t necessarily mean throwing money around. Funds wasted on excess fuel use, harsh braking and speeding often goes undetected as it can be “too hard” to spot each instance. With fleet tracking, you can see where the problem areas are and take steps to eliminate it. Steps could include:

· Introducing driver education.

· Maximising route efficiency.

· Implementing good driver incentives.

When fleets are funded by multiple departments in the organisation, untangling who is responsible for which costs often relies on guesswork. With a tracking system, you can directly see all vehicle activity across the board in real-time and generate accurate reports to validate charges with telematics fitted across the fleet.

Utilise your assets

Every minute matters on the road and being in the know is essential. Vehicle location data means that when jobs are completed, a proof of service is generated and can be easily converted into a report. If you’re sending two vehicles out on a call, but the data indicates that only one is required, the other vehicle can be sent on another job.

With information at your fingertips, such as when a vehicle is due for a service or when a driver completed their last shift, scheduling decisions become easier. Tracking system data can be analysed to give you insights that would have been impossible to see in the past, such as a machine that requires more maintenance than average, which may indicate a deeper problem.

Deliver on sustainability

Reducing your carbon footprint and cutting down on carbon emissions is vital to New Zealand sustainability commitments and an important issue to citizens. Comprehensive fleet management allows you to tackle emissions in a number of ways:

· Effectively manage EV vehicles. For inspiration check out the 2017 AFMA Fleet Environment Award winner.

· Optimise the routing for vehicles reduces fuel wastage, this is especially useful when vehicles must make multiple journeys in a day to get to tasks.

· Reduce the fleet pool through effective management – which can help you to channel spend into cleaner vehicles for the smaller pool.

· Track idling time and address the driver actions that are causing them to idle.

· Use the fleet tracking to service vehicles regularly based on distance driven – making them more efficient.

· Reduce speeding incidents across the fleet which unnecessarily waste fuel.

Prioritise driver safety

Monitoring driver behaviour through a fleet management software means unsafe behaviours such as speeding can be brought to light.

· Risks, like speeding, can be addressed as they happen with real-time alerts from an in-vehicle device.

· Driver behaviour can be reviewed and analysed with the ability to replay events.

· Full safety plans can be implemented and measured to show progress with driver score cards.

· Good drivers can be rewarded for their behaviour based on accurate calculations.

By extension, your fleet then has no trouble complying within policies such as the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015.

Whether you operate on the local or state level, tracking your fleet means you can effectively serve the public and not end up getting served.