4 Ways Fleet Data Analytics Will Make Your Fleet More Efficient

Operating a fleet of vehicles is one of the biggest expenses in your business and fuel prices are on the rise. It's your job as a fleet manager to ensure every asset is being used efficiently to maximise profits.

Rich analytical fleet data sets can break down the use of every vehicle and the performance of individual drivers. This improved visibility helps you develop a clear understanding of when, why and how each vehicle is being used.

Now you can track how each asset is performing against the key performance indicators that matter to your business ? journey times, fuel consumption or personal and private usage. Here are four ways fleet data analytics will improve the operational efficiency of your fleet:

Vehicle usage

Do you know which of your vehicles was used for the entire working day and where they went? What would you do if you knew some of your pool cars had spent more than 60 per cent of the past month in the car park?

Armed with this sort of fleet data analytics knowledge, assets that are parked up on a construction site could be moved to another job where extra vehicles are being hired at additional costs. A logistics company that has unusually high idling rates might look into whether too much time is being spent loading and unloading contents. Could engines be turned off to save fuel?

There are also big savings to be made by tracking driver behaviours like excessive speeding or harsh braking and cornering. Tracking these metrics and educating drivers will have a major impact on operational efficiency.

Lease Management

One pain point a lot of our customers talk about is how they struggle to manage lease terms and compliance against those terms.? Using fleet data analytics you can predict how many kilometres each vehicle will achieve relative to active leases.? Depending on the services your leasing partner provides, this can include the additional costs around the operation of the vehicle such as fuel and maintenance costs.

With the predictive model in place, the platform constantly benchmarks the vehicle against its lease distance to identify under- and over-use.? Armed with this intelligence, fleet managers can consider options to maximise the value on the lease e.g. repatriate vehicles to under-performing business units, review lease terms early and readjust vehicle budgets. When a vehicle exceeds the distance stipulated in a lease, your business is often charged for every extra kilometre.

You can also measure whether the monthly cost of leasing a vehicle outweighs the benefits it brings. Are the adjusted capitalised costs too much? Should a cheaper lease be negotiated next time? Credible leasing partners will work with you to refine your fleet mix and terms once you are armed with the intelligence your need from the AI platform. For a large enterprise, calculating the real cost of a lease against asset utilisation data can account for millions of dollars.

Fuel Costs

Fuel accounts for a significant part of operational costs. Fleet data analytics means your business can take a closer look at exactly how each vehicle in the fleet is being used and build a clearer picture of fuel consumption.

Now you can accurately track fuel spend on every vehicle. This can correlate consumption with other variables like harsh breaking, speeding and idling to identify improvement targets and reduce costs. You might request all assets be switched off after three inactive minutes to meet a fuel reduction target of 5 per cent over the next three months. Now that you're tracking performance, reminders can be sent to any operators that record lengthy idle times.

Recording fuel consumption and comparing it to usage fleet data highlights situations where vehicles have been refilled when they should have had plenty of fuel in the tank. Has it been siphoned off into another car or a boat for personal use? Fleet data analytics will also shed light on cases where fleet vehicles are driven long distances outside of business hours. Using time and location data, you will know if a vehicle has been driven out of hours and consumed half a tank of petrol for personal use.

FBT Liability

Fleet analytics will reduce your fringe benefits tax (FBT) liability without subjecting you to the complex and time-consuming process of collating data for personal and private use. An FBT calculator easily and accurately breaks down operating times for each vehicle. You can run a report to find the best private-use period within the year. This data can be used during salary package negotiations and to minimise your liability for personal use.

The Australian Taxation Office stipulates that fleet vehicle logbooks can apply for a period of five years ? a policy designed to save your business time when it comes to manually collating data for each individual year. However, this simplicity comes at a cost because a 20 per cent private use rate applies for the entire five-year period. Fleet analytics gives your businesses the opportunity to continually reduce FBT liability year on year. The most up-to-date data can be used to set targets, create vehicle policies and negotiate employment contracts.