Why Going Paperless Will Make Administration Easier

In any business managing a fleet of vehicles, your staff gather and assess mass amounts of data every day. They manage important documents, keep track of finances, schedule jobs, assign tasks, manage compliance requirements – the list goes on.

However, paper-based processes make these tasks a lot slower than they need to be. You need to sort through dozens of pages to find the data relevant to you, and even then, these files can get damaged, misplaced or stolen.

By making the shift to a paperless workforce, administrative staff can complete their jobs more efficiently while also making life easier for other staff. Here’s how.

Real-Time Insights

With paper-based processes, it can take all day for information to make its way from the driver to the office. This makes it incredibly difficult for people across the business to understand details like current workload, hours spent behind the wheel and whether they’re able to take on a pressing job a customer has called in, let alone knowing exactly where vehicles are.  

Instead of waiting for the forms and paperwork to come back to the office to be manually entered into the system, the information is instantly accessible across the business through fleet management solutions. Enabling this means your team can get on with more strategic initiatives rather than chasing up details. For example, if an urgent job arises, staff can view current workloads across the fleet to see who can pick up the additional task.

Designed to work even in the most remote areas of the country, fleet management systems help businesses better understand employee and asset behaviours by providing second-by-second data on location, speed, harsh usage and more.

With access to all these insights as they come in, admin staff can make more effective decisions on the fly. If there’s a driver who is speeding, back-office staff can alert the driver via their in-cabin device to slow down. All this data and communication is backed up, providing you with a clear log of risky behaviours or business trends, such as idle time and fuel usage.

Streamlined Asset Management

Paper-based processes aren’t only time consuming but can lead to vital information being missed. If an urgent job arises that requires a specific vehicle and your files are incomplete, this gives your staff an incomplete picture of the fleet.

By equipping your assets with battery-powered GPS trackers, everything from trucks and light vehicles to unpowered mobile machinery and plant equipment is viewable instantly. No more relying on outdated paperwork to know where each vehicle is – the info you need is right at your fingertips.

Having access to this telematics data enables admin staff to better manage assets. For example, if there’s a potential fault with a vehicle, it can take days or weeks for this information to make its way to the back office, and by this time, the fault could have evolved into a serious hazard. By going paperless, admin staff will immediately be notified of the issue. The asset can then be taken off the road to undergo the necessary repairs before it can go out on the road again.

Using telematics within vehicles also helps to improve overall performance. Say you get your equipment serviced on a regular basis. If there’s certain machinery that gets used more often that other assets, this data will be brought to your attention. Because of its frequent use, you may decide this particular asset requires more frequent servicing compared to the rest of your equipment.

Bringing More Money Back

Did you know that printed forms and paper documentation cost businesses more than $120 billion each year?

Not only is there a price to pay for printing and storing these documents, but mismanaging paper forms can also cost your business dearly. On average, four weeks each year are spent waiting on misfiled or lost documents. This also drives up storage costs if the paperwork becomes too out of control to store at the office.

By making the leap to paperless operations, misplaced physical documentation will become a thing of the past. All information across the business is instantly available. Admin staff don’t need to sort through pages of info to find what they need, enabling them to be more productive and get more jobs completed quickly.

Having all company data readily available enables admin staff to make more cost-effective decisions. Say there’s a trend among drivers of unnecessary idling, a habit that leads to excessive fuel use. By seeing this trend as it emerges, staff can educate drivers and help rectify the situation, ensuring that fuel isn’t wasted and helping to save the business more money in the long run.

 

Becoming a paperless workforce isn’t just great for decluttering the driver’s cabin. By storing all information digitally, administrative staff across all transport fleets can deliver real-time insights, ensure all equipment is properly managed and help to bring more money back into your business.

Find out everything you need to know about going paperless, and how to make a smooth transition to digital processes.