Today my office is at one end of the dining room table. It was not that long ago it was a five-mile drive to an office, where I would park my car amongst 40 to 50 other vehicles; who, without a doubt, had not gone through any pre-driving checks that day, in fact probably not at all since their last service or MOT.
With the potential decrease in miles travelled and more of us working from home in post “Covid-Zoomland”, when we do drive again we will need to be confident in, not just our vehicles, but in our fitness to drive.
So here are five ways to avoid any nasty surprises:
- Traditionally having a clear policy visible to all the stakeholders was the way to go. For most, it was something you signed up to when you joined the business and then put it away in your sock drawer never to see the light of day.
The policy needs to be a living concept and interactive with all stakeholders. Your solution must have proactive automation of the mundane that prevents the hidden, forgotten and any reluctant compliance. As we see the true emergence of the connected car into our daily routine, reactive fleet management activity will become less and less.
Keeping control of the types of vehicles on your fleet and ensuring they are fit for purpose, including employees using their own vehicles, should be at the core of your fleet policy. - Avoiding Nasty is about having a platform that firsts predict and alerts when nasty could happen. Your fleet management system should be doing that in a true bi-directional manner, right into the hands of an App using driver and back to the fleet operator. It is the automation of prevention rather than cure that really moves it to the next level.
Like all good fleet management solutions, it must be good at keeping detailed fleet and driver records. Getting past Nasty is when the system tells you well in advance about the issues and then manages what needs to happen. Informing all the right folk along the process journey, taking audit on the journey, and escalating to a resolution. - Ensuring your vehicle drivers are compliant with the law and physically fit to drive is a sure way to prevent true Nasty surprises. The system must make sure drivers stay aware of their individual obligations and help prevent unnecessary risk to the business. Enhance that with the right telemetry to help understand what your drivers are doing and define goals and expectations for driver performance.
Gamification of your driving policy to encourage safe driving habits, by incentivising drivers for sticking to policy and behaving in ways to save the company money. - Ensuring all the third relationships are optimised to your fleet requirements. Are you getting the best from your suppliers? It is not always about how cheap, but how are they performing to ensure you are getting the right service at the right time in an equitable manner to keep your operation safe, effective, and competitive.
- The ODOdrive dashboard gives you the real-time preventative view and your Metrics measuring the development of what good really looks like.
The automotive sector is going through some major transitions driven by new digital ecosystems, which will see major disruption around fuel, insurance, maintenance, usage and how we acquire mobility.
Avoiding Nasty Surprises is about making the fleet management experience proactive, effortless, and mobile-enabled.
