What is Fleet Information Management? A Comprehensive Guide
Oded Ran, CEO and Co-Founder of Clue since 2019, expertly integrates AI and data tools to revolutionize construction equipment management and maintenance, positioning Clue as a premier software choice in the construction industry.
Running a fleet is quite a challenge, isn’t it? Between fuel, compliance, maintenance schedule, and performance appraisal for drivers, it is quite overwhelming.
But what if there was an option to make all of that much easier? Well, Fleet Information Management (FIM) is the answer to that problem.
When it comes to solving all necessary tasks in a fleet’s operations, you should think about the FIM tool.
The other thing it’s not is just data management It’s about delivering the levels of insight and control to empower cost reduction, enhanced performance, and improved decision-making.
People don’t seem to have time to manage all those details starting from the increase in operational costs to constant regulatory issues and real-time vehicle tracking – Fleet Information Management is here to help you save your time and energy.
To fully understand how it works and why it can be such a valuable tool for anyone managing a fleet today, let’s turn to the example.
What is Fleet Management?
Companies across the board require these commercial vehicles for people and goods transportation for everything from cross-country deliveries to your local gas and oil company.
These commercial vehicles are referred to as fleets and are usually among the highest fixed costs for an organization.
Fleet management is the general administration of company vehicles in a way that may involve the control of allocation, assignment, directing, and monitoring of company vehicles.
They also provide information on maintenance, vehicle acquisition and disposal, driver management and control, location tracking, and compliance with regulatory requirements.
Advances in technology have revolutionized fleet management. Even with these advancements, innovations are still emerging each year.
Here are the new trends in technologies that continue to impact fleet management practices:
- Autonomous Vehicles: You have undoubtedly witnessed the utilization of fully autonomous vehicles in specialist logistics or military operations. The effectiveness and security offered by a fleet management system are dependent on these interconnected devices.
- 5G Network Connectivity: 5G connection, which is one hundred times quicker than 4G technology, has already been adopted by the majority of wireless providers. Fleet management hardware and IoT bandwidth are both enhanced by these lightning-fast rates.
- Telematics: Telematics allows operators to see diagnostic data from vehicles in real-time, which improves their efficiency and decision-making. These capabilities are being improved by technologies like AI, which makes them more appealing and opens the door to new data visualizations and standards for data collection.
How Does Fleet Management Work?
A fleet management system is a collection of tools and processes that allow you to keep track of all of your vehicles and their locations.
Important to this cycle are fleet managers. They are responsible for managing the industry's issues and ensuring profitable operations through coordinating systems, technologies, integrations, and workers.
Vehicle and fleet performance, tracking data simplification, and cost control in fleet operations are all benefits of a good fleet management system.
Embedding process automation into your fleet management plan will help your organization remain competitive in the face of rising demand and other industry problems.
Personalized maintenance plans and data aggregation for simpler analysis are two ways in which modern fleet management solutions simplify data administration and operations.
It is effective because it manages all aspects of commercial vehicles' lives, including safety, efficiency, production, and compliance.
Your company relies on efficient fleet management. How does it guarantee this every day? We'll get to that in a bit.
What is a Fleet Information Management System?
When it comes to managing, controlling, analyzing, optimizing, and scheduling duties for your organization, a fleet management system is essential software.
You can depend on thorough data analysis and intelligent suggestions that can be approved or rejected in real time with this all-in-one solution.
By far, the most consequential effect of using digital management solutions is the freedom to automate and optimize workflows.
Fleet solutions streamline the process of identifying and eliminating bottlenecks in field service operations, automate improvements based on data analytics, and integrate various features such as GPS-tracking and telematics, vehicle diagnostics and maintenance, fuel management, asset tracking, route optimization, driver safety monitoring, and customer relationship management into a single, easy-to-use interface.
Operational efficiency can be enhanced with the use of digital fleet information management software, which offers valuable insights into business operations and allows for a thorough comprehension of operating costs.
Users will find the fleet management system more intuitive and easy to use if the process of digital systems orchestration is better and more well-thought-out before deployment.
What Are The Types Of Fleet Information Management Systems?
1. Vehicle Tracking Systems: Locate the movement of vehicles in real time geographical position that may be tracked through GPS and telematics.
2. Maintenance Management Systems: Concentrate on monitoring and planning service times in order to avoid car failure and reduce the period when the car is out of service.
3. Fuel Management Systems: Managing fuel consumption in order to successfully minimize expenses and increase effectiveness.
4. Driver Management Systems: Maintain control of / increase driver standards for safety and productivity enhancement.
5. Dispatch and Scheduling Systems: This will enhance the best allocation of vehicles and particular routes with an aim of delivering at the right time and with less costs.
6. Compliance Management Systems: Complicity with legal and regulatory provisions.
7. Comprehensive Fleet Management Systems: Offer an overall solution where some of the activities of fleet management are combined in one package.
8. Mobile Fleet Management Systems: Provide fleet managers with real-time control of the General Fleet and other aspects of fleet management by means of mobile tools.
Key Features of a Fleet Information Management Systems
With the help of a fleet management system, you can keep tabs on a variety of vehicle metrics, organize your maintenance schedule, buy new vehicles, and keep tabs on your drivers.
Fleet management systems often offer the following features:
Vehicle Tracking
Fleet managers can keep tabs on every vehicle's performance and maintenance needs with the use of GPS.
Not all businesses use GPS tracking software; some additionally use video recording capabilities to keep tabs on their fleet.
Driving Behavior Analysis
A component for driving behavior is typically included in the vehicle tracking system.
To make sure drivers are safe while behind the wheel, fleets track their driving habits and behaviors and assign them scores.
Fuel Management
Fuel consumption and vehicle patterns can be uncovered with the use of fleet management solutions.
Because it examines actions that impact fuel consumption, including idling or frequent braking, this function is closely related to the driver analysis.
Route Monitoring
Fleet managers can optimize route planning by tracking vehicle movements and scheduling.
To improve efficiency and give drivers up-to-the-minute information on their vehicles, more and more people are turning to mobile apps.
DVIR
Quickly and easily submit vehicle and maintenance issues with Digital Vehicle Inspection Reports (DVIR).
To prevent unscheduled vehicle downtime, it is helpful to be able to upload photos in real time and have them pointed out to issue locations.
Dispatch/Job Management
With digital work management, you can automate client interactions, keep tabs on progress, and develop and allocate daily run sheets and one-off assignments to your team—all from a single application.
In addition to facilitating process workflow, these instruments offer proof of delivery in the form of a photo and a signature.
HOS/ELD
Electronic logging devices (ELDs) for hours-of-service (HOS) are mandated by law for many fleets that must retain a record of drivers' duty status.
When your electronic log solution (ELS) is integrated with your fleet management software, tracking driver hours and assigning tasks becomes much easier.
Top 7 Benefits of Fleet Information Management System
Below are even more benefits you can get with fleet tracking services.
1. Fuel Consumption Control
The initial stage towards environmentally friendly logistics is the rigorous regulation of fuel consumption.
When a truck is about to go over its daily mileage restriction, for instance, you can get a notification and update about it through a fleet management system.
This could be the result of risky driving, poor route planning, or a change in how customer orders are processed.
But the software for managing the fleet of vehicles may also have all the tools necessary to avoid this problem, and a dashboard that you can personalize will show you how.
Unexpected insights on fuel consumption management can also be gleaned from telematics technologies. Idle time was found to be the time when one of Cprime's clients' vehicle fleets consumed the most gasoline.
As it turns out, the fuel consumption is higher when the engine is left to idle rather than stopped and started again.
Just by reminding the drivers to turn off the engine while it's not in use, whether for dispatch or loading, our customer was able to drastically reduce expenses.
2. Automated Reports and Insights into Fleet Operations
One of the most prominent advantages of a fleet tracking system is this. Easy data extraction and integration with accounting software are two of its many features, along with built-in dashboards for reporting, analytics, and visualization.
Time is saved and errors are prevented with automatically generated reports.
Company management can control and boost profitability and ROI, improve customer service, and grow a formidable fleet with the help of a custom fleet management system's comprehensive charts and configurable dashboards.
3. Preventative Maintenance and Wear-Out Control
The fleet management tool, which is AI-driven, can gain even more utility with predictive maintenance.
We have already shown that the system is responsible for collecting and analyzing data pertaining to scheduled services and repairs.
In order to save downtime, outwears, and expensive repairs, artificial intelligence can predict when a certain spare part will need to be repaired or replaced and alert you ahead of time.
Vehicle maintenance control intervals can be linked to variables such as mileage, usage time and load, driving habits, and road conditions.
Everything can be monitored in real-time, with alerts sent to the responsible Fleet Manager and maintenance scheduled ahead of time—all in the blink of an eye.
Clue can guarantee that the fleet is always operating at peak efficiency and that all delivery deadlines are meticulously met through the use of vehicle diagnostics and preventative maintenance.
4. Real-Time Fleet Data Gathering and Analysis
Your vehicles produce a tremendous amount of data daily, as mentioned earlier. With a fleet management system, you can always see the most recent information and view specific indicators, such as the current location of a specific vehicle or the total number of pickups and deliveries.
Typically, for a business to streamline data flows and give appropriate information access points for the people in charge, it must connect many systems into a unified digital ecosystem.
The commercial vehicle offers a wealth of telematics data that can be used to gain a competitive edge, making this a crucial component of any fleet operation.
With the help of reporting tools, you can see the big picture and get down to the nitty-gritty of every order and fleet vehicle, as well as identify and see potential improvement areas and bottlenecks.
5. Fleet Safety
A driver behavior monitoring system that is already integrated into the fleet management system is one of its most significant advantages.
Notify yourself whenever your driver makes a mistake on the road, and set specific settings (such as alarms for sudden braking) if you choose.
We have already gone over the benefits of driver behavior monitoring, but to sum it up, it's a chance for you to make the roads safer, save money, and extend the life of the vehicles.
Our customer has implemented a system to monitor its drivers' risky habits, such as excessive speeding.
In order to determine when and why experienced drivers start to drive recklessly, they have also considered the drivers' overall behavior quality and their demonstrated abilities.
Unfortunately, the route's awful road conditions were the root cause of the aggressive driving.
In addition to enhancing driver and fleet safety, re-routing helped the organization reduce fuel usage, maintenance needs, and keep dispatching schedules consistent.
6. Delivery Deadline Compliance
One other option to optimize your company, reduce expenses, and be environmentally conscious due to reasonable fuel usage is by using a smart fleet management system, which can also properly design routes.
The business gains a lot of leeway in making judgments and rerouting as needed thanks to the fleet monitoring software.
No human or group of competent Fleet Managers could ever hope to manually schedule and reschedule jobs in response to incoming changes in orders and routes; intelligent automation and supplementary use of machine learning technologies are the only viable options.
Not only can this function ensure that deliveries are made on time, but it also allows for a substantial increase in the number of deliveries done per unit of time.
7. Fleet Fraud Prevention
You most likely have a group of very competent and trustworthy drivers working for you, yet driver fraud is already a common occurrence in the logistics industry.
Driver fuel card fraud accounts for the vast majority of attempted frauds (such as making false accusations of theft or loss or using the card outside of work hours).
It is essential to be vigilant, monitor, assess, combat, and rule out the likelihood of such endeavors at all times, regardless of whether the naughty action was purposeful or the product of carelessness.
A fleet management system driven by AI can spot these outliers and form inferences about the veracity or falsity of claims based on data.
Clue - The Smart Fleet Information Management Solution
Clue is the most sophisticated fleet information management system which helps businesses to manage fleets efficiently, spend less, increase the safety of drivers, and meet all the legal requirements.
With innovations like real-time GPS, IoT, and machine learning for diagnostics or predictive analysis, Clue gives a holistic and user-friendly interface to control all of a fleet’s life cycle aspects.
With Clue, businesses can have efficient solutions to make better decisions and increase productivity.
The various analytical and report-generating capabilities of the platform can offer a comprehensive picture of the status of a fleet and then present actionable steps that can be taken to minimize or correct problem areas.
Functions like compliance, maintenance, and fuel management are vital and cannot be overlooked when recognizing how Clue helps reduce time, effort, and the likelihood of errors.
Integration with over 70+ third-party systems ensures that all operations are consolidated in a single platform, while custom-built dashboards and mobile compatibility enable fleet managers to monitor operations continuously and efficiently.
- Unified Dashboard: Clue provides a single-pane-of-glass view, centralizing all fleet data—such as service records and regulatory compliance—into one accessible location.
- Automated Maintenance Scheduling: The platform tracks each vehicle's condition and schedules maintenance proactively, reducing downtime and extending vehicle lifespan.
- Utilization Insights: An intuitive dashboard identifies underutilized vehicles, enabling optimization of their use and reduction of idle machinery and rental expenses.
- Integration Capabilities: With over 70 integration options, Clue consolidates telematics data from various Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) into a central location, ensuring smooth operations and efficient workflows.
- Work Order Management: Our all-in-one work order management system allows users to create, assign, and manage work orders for maintenance issues directly within the app, facilitating efficient task handling.
Final Thoughts
We all know how difficult it is to manage fleets. However, keeping up doesn't have to be that difficult. Get your freight where it needs to go faster, save money, and use the correct software.
Fleet managers should completely embrace new technological breakthroughs to keep updated and on top of company trends. For effective fleet management, certain tools and methods are essential.
By embracing state-of-the-art technologies, organizations can maximize productivity, minimize expenses, increase security, and streamline processes!
Transform Your Equipment Management
