How profitable?

Failing to allocate all the costs of the cars and vans that had to be used to a particular job, or allocating inaccurate figures means a company cannot tell how profitable the job was; or if it generated a profit at all. Basel, Switzerland-based leasing specialist Auto-Interleasing realised some time ago that this was a problem some of its customers might face so it decided to use Sofico’s Miles software system to help them solve it.

It enabled Auto-Interleasing to offer its clients a solution called Full Distance. It allows them to record the precise monthly costs for each vehicle on the fleet based on a pre-agreed matrix of prices linked to the mileage driven.

Mileages are captured from the driver or fleet manager using odometer readings or downloaded into the Sofico system courtesy of an onboard telematics "black box". The costs can then be set against the job concerned.

Customer choice

In a separate area of fleet management, in the USA Telogis has recently introduced Telogis Appointment as an extension to its cloud-based location intelligence software platform and as the latest addition to the Telogis Route Planning Suite.

Suitable for companies that run fleets of vans on home delivery work, it allows consumers to pick delivery slots that are the most convenient for them, while at the same time being the most cost-effective windows for the delivery firm. Estimated times of arrival can be transmitted to the consumer by text or email.

‘By providing a higher level of service to their own customers, Telogis customers benefit from increased fuel savings, mobile worker productivity and profits,’ says Telogis co-founder and president, Telogis Route and Navigation, Newth Morris.

The ability to call on such differing facilities is but one example of the impact up-to-date software can have on the way a fleet is run. The scale of this impact is being increasingly appreciated by major users according to Chevin Fleet Solutions managing director, Ashley Sowerby.

‘What usually happens is that a user adopts a system, it is provided on a software-as-a-service basis and the fleet’s investment is limited to the monthly per-user fee that we charge,’ he observes.

‘However, we have some customers who believe that a planned and ongoing investment in fleet software is highly worthwhile,’ he continues. ‘They might decide to acquire a particular module that we produce in order to solve a specific problem, or even to set budget aside to ensure they are using their existing system to its fullest potential.’

He is acutely conscious that this sounds painfully like a sales pitch – ‘It just looks as though we are trying to get clients to spend more money’ – but adds that the self-same point was made by a major customer at a Chevin user group meeting held recently in the USA; and the reaction from other clients present to what was said had been a positive one.

Cost monitoring

Chevin has been enjoying some success in the USA of late, with New England’s Northeast Utilities opting for its FleetWave web-based fleet management software to help it look after more than 5,400 pieces of equipment across seven operating companies.

Many thousands of miles away, FleetWave is making significant progress in sub-Saharan Africa.

Nairobi-based Toyota Kenya is employing it to manage a major deal it has struck with the country’s government. The company is supplying leased vehicles to several government departments, starting with the Kenyan Police.

‘It is being used by the Toyota distributor to monitor the costs associated with these vehicles, including factors such as repair times and the elimination or reduction of any undesirable expense,’ says Telematics Africa director George Kuria, who helped to put the Chevin deal together. ‘Toyota is the most popular vehicle here so Toyota Kenya was chosen to pilot the new lease project.’

Leasing rather than choosing outright purchase is something of a departure for the Kenyan authorities but it is a development that has been under consideration for a while. ‘However, the plan remained in limbo until there was a change of government under a new constitution last year,’ says Kuria.

He believes that FleetWave will eventually be used to oversee around 12,000 leased vehicles. ‘That’s a huge project by Kenyan fleet standards,’ he remarks.

Multilingual monitoring

Go global – or even use it in just one country in certain cases – and you quickly discover that fleet software has to be capable of being adopted for use in more than one tongue.

‘One reason why we selected Miles was because of its genuine multilingual capability,’ says Auto-Interleasing IT director, Philipp Spaniol.

‘In Switzerland we speak three main languages; French, German and Italian,’ he continues. ‘To use a system that could easily be converted from one language to another was extremely important to us.

‘It also interfaces with automotive suppliers such as fuel card and tyre companies and service garages very easily and that’s another key factor for us,’ he adds. ‘We’re fleet managers, not software developers, so ease of use really matters.’

The multilingual capability of Miles also appealed to Turkey’s Hedef Fleet Services. ‘Translating it from English to Turkish was very straightforward,’ says managing director, Onder Erdem.

Fleet software has to be capable of handling inputs from a wide variety of onboard telematics systems that – as indicated above – monitor mileage as well as track the whereabouts of the user and download information on everything from fuel usage to whether or not the driver is accelerating too quickly. In the USA, Telogis has announced that it is joining forces with General Motors to make it easier for fleet operators to receive real-time information that addresses many of these areas using the latter’s OnStar telematics technology installed in GM vehicles.

Outdated software and hardware

Increasingly, however, fleet software is some way behind the software to be found on the smartphones, tablets and ultrabooks that employees carry around with them for personal use says Sowerby; and these so-called Bring-Your-Own-Devices (BYODs) may be used for work purposes as well, he points out.

‘In the corporate world we have many users running our software on Windows XP desktops that date back up to a decade,’ he says.

‘Contrast this with the cutting-edge personally-owned devices that many employees use at work as part of their day-to-day lives,’ he continues. ‘They’re often several generations ahead of the official corporate IT.

‘As a consequence we’ve developed our software to meet the needs of BYODs and often make use of capabilities built into these devices that are not found in any corporate desktop or laptop PC,’ says Sowerby. ‘GPS is a good example.

‘In this way BYOD is helping to push forward the development of our products at a faster pace than would otherwise be happening.’

He goes on to warn however that if employees are using personal smartphones, tablets and so on to access fleet software then a company has no control over who may try to get into its system if the devices are stolen or lost. As a consequence, corporate IT policy needs to be modified to take this risk into account and minimise its possible impact.

Not all fleets rely on obsolete corporate software and operating systems of course and many businesses are replacing packages that have long outlived their usefulness.

In the Republic of Ireland, Kilbarrack, Dublin-based Avis Fleet Services Ireland recently employed Bynx to implement bynxFLEET across its entire operation.

The new package supplanted one that been in place for 10 years, had never been upgraded and was not integrated with any other aspect of the business. Information silos had developed alongside inefficiency and high cost.

‘We were losing out to competitors in tenders because of the limitations of our technology,’ says financial accountant/director, Brian Tobin.

Integrated software

Underlining just how comprehensive a modern fleet software package can be, bynxFLEET is made up of a database engine, a financial reporting platform and a suite of modules and applications that cover all elements of the business of fleet operation and vehicle leasing. They address everything from maintenance to disposal.

Other areas that can be handled include vehicle procurement and licensing, accidents, fines, fuel and tyres.

Drill down into this sort of data and you can soon see for example which cars are spending too much time in the workshop – and whether the cost of some of the work done can be recovered under warranty – and the nature and cost of some of the accidents that are occurring; and which drivers are having them.

Tobin and his colleagues are also introducing bynxNET, which will allow them to provide web portals and online access to customers, drivers and other stakeholders, many of whom of course may have gone the BYOD route.

Fleet management software needs to be capable of accommodating the changing requirements of businesses; and that includes going the corporate car-sharing route. It is a requirement recognised by Next Generation Mobility (NGM) of Munich, Germany, which has come up with some web-based software called fleetster.

Designed to help clients manage pool cars, it provides users with an easy means of booking them, thereby increasing fleet utilisation – usually by more than 25% says NGM – and potentially allowing for the overall size of the car pool to be reduced. It also makes it easier to integrate electric cars into the pool, NGM contends, because it finds the most suitable vehicle for each journey; and if it is a short trip the vehicle concerned may be battery-powered.

Also available with fleetster are a variety of other functions including service reminders and driving licence checks.

Users of fleetster include skiing equipment manufacturer Atomic Austria and Dutch energy companies TenneT and Cogas.

TenneT says that switching to NGM’s system resulted in a 90% drop in pool car administration costs. Cogas reports that utilisation of the electric car it operates has risen significantly since fleetster was introduced, partly because the software always knows whether it has enough charge left in its batteries to complete the trip the driver needs to make.

Any fleet management software package must be designed to help fleet managers make sense of the tidal wave of data that constantly sweeps towards them, says Sowerby. ‘What we need is for the graphical representations of information to become ever more flexible and for dashboards to become the central point of fleet management,’ he observes.

That way the never-ending stream of facts and figures – with exceptions to pre-determined parameters highlighted – may become easier to digest.

If this is the case then perhaps software companies may care to take a look at some of the work carried out by online tachograph analysis bureaux that help heavy truck operators comply with the European Union Drivers Hours rules. They use on-screen dashboards that enable fleet managers to see at a glance if their drivers are obeying the law and where and when breaches have occurred; vital information given that the penalties for getting it wrong in such a tightly-regulated industry can be truly draconian.