Sometimes, less can really be more. For field technicians who traverse territories with company fleet vehicles, the smallest process change can have a substantial impact. For one, think about the patterns and behaviors of those drivers. The American Trucking Association says that an hour of idling each day for an entire year is the equivalent of about 70,000 miles in engine wear. When you find a way to eliminate a fraction of daily idling time, you’re extending the life of your vehicle. Also, you will delay the outlay of capital needed to buy a new one. Not to mention the positive environmental effects of limited idling. That’s an example of a simple change that an individual driver can make to help our planet and the bottom line. A company-wide change that can eliminate inefficiencies at every level, from individual drivers’ habits to C-suite decision-making: going paperless.
A company that uses paper for route guidance not only waste valuable resources but also put their drivers at risk. Even encountering dangerous road conditions and traffic jams. When you go from a paper-based work order process to an automated solution- that means less time in vehicles – and more time completing jobs.
Let’s take a closer look at how using less paper and adopting effective fleet management software can improve driver patterns. Also, optimizing route guidance, and enhanced scheduling:
In the old days (or current days for some organizations), a driver received a clipboard with a sheet that listed the stops and a day’s worth of tasks. Outside of a phone call to check in on progress, the driver was unattended and free to drive wherever and however he or she saw fit. In some cases, that meant exceeding the speed limit or driving erratically. In others, it meant idling in a parking lot for an extra hour to kill some time. But whatever the wasteful behaviors were, there was no way to monitor them.
There is now.
A good fleet management system will have a module that provides fleet managers with the visibility they’ve been lacking. They can see exactly how fast (or slow) drivers are traveling with built-in GPS analytics. Best of all, they can review that data with the driver and explain how his or her behaviors could be causing the truck to be on the road longer than necessary, damaging profit margins.
Before we all had smartphones or built-in navigation systems in our personal vehicles, many people would print turn-by-turn directions from the internet and bring them along on a trip. Before that, drivers would pick up state or national maps and carefully review them to plot a course. Directions weren’t exactly convenient, nor could they be updated in real-time.
They can be now.
EnSight+ is able to provide real-time route guidance with no paper needed. Our fleet management system spits out the most efficient route for a driver to go from job to job. It can also help the driver avoid delays like road construction. If an accident happens on the freeway, your driver won’t be stuck in the gridlock because we’ll alert him or her to take an earlier exit. Paper maps simply can’t do that.
If you woke up on a Saturday and left the house to run errands, you wouldn’t go to one store on the west side of town, come back to the east side of town for another, and then return to the west for your last stop. That would be an incredible waste of time and resources. The same can be said about scheduling drivers’ and technicians’ stops. Even someone doing paper scheduling knows to keep one driver’s routes to the same general area. But in an emergency a fleet manager needs someone fast, there’s no way the manager could know which technician is closest at that moment.
They can now.
During times of crisis or emergency, customers want the technician who is going to get there the fastest to fix the problem — EnSight+ can help. Using GPS tracking, managers can cluster-schedule techs’ jobs so they’re confined to certain zones. EnSight+ can even alert you if they leave their designated zone. And when emergency strikes, a tech needs to respond quickly, and managers can scan the fleet management system to see which tech is nearest and can get there with minimal drive time.
A fleet management system can help fleet managers improve their fleet management and develop a vehicle fleet management strategy that maximizes efficiency. Click here to learn more from EnSight+ about the key features you should look for in fleet management software.
All monitored by you, in real time. Are you ready to take control?