Fleet managers do not have an easy life. Their job requires them to have many balls in the air at the same time while keeping an overview. Even if as a fleet manager you basically enjoy dealing with people, vehicles, and paper, there are still some situations that drive you crazy. Our tips & tricks are for exactly these situations! It’s all about keeping calm and best avoiding such situations in the future.
Running after missing mileage
It is one of the tasks of a fleet manager to be able to estimate which leased vehicles may have over or under mileage. This enables the fleet manager to take countermeasures in time and to avoid unpleasant surprises and additional costs when the contract ends. To do this, it is essential to have an overview of the current mileage of all vehicles in the fleet. The truth for many fleet managers is, that for the majority of vehicles, mileage data is often not available and updated. And this is the challenge: calling the drivers until you have a complete list of the mileage, taking a quick look at the vehicles themselves, manually going through fuel card statements, …
This is where fleet management software can help. With Avrios, mileage is automatically read out via the fuel card integration and the current mileage is always available in the system for each vehicle. Here's an example of different types of fuel cards
Time-consuming processing of damages
Probably every fleet manager fears the moment when a driver calls to report a damage incident. The correspondence until all the necessary information about the damage is gathered – including contact details, the course of the accident, pictures, etc. – can already take up a lot of time and effort. Then it needs to be decided whether to report the damage to the insurance company – and if so, all relevant information must be transmitted. And much more important for the driver: the damages must be repaired quickly. For the fleet manager, this means obtaining repair offers, selecting and commissioning a workshop, and perhaps even organising a replacement vehicle. In any case, he must always keep an eye on what comes next. This is no easy task, especially if there are several damages at the same time.
Also here, the use of software can help: In Avrios, the entire damage process is mapped, from the damage report with pictures by the driver directly from the smartphone, the digital document management, a status overview of all damage in the fleet, and the workshop order. It does not get any easier.
Paying fines
One or two speeding tickets or parking fines are part of life, regardless of whether you use your private or company car. As a fleet manager who looks after a large number of vehicles, you are therefore regularly faced with fines – it’s part of everyday fleet life. However, it is completely unnecessary to receive fines late or to forward them to the driver late, often with additional reminders and delay fees. Moreover, fines are often not to be paid by the company but directly by the person who has caused the fine, which entails additional costs for forwarding and control.
To counteract this, a fleet solution with automatic fine management is a good idea – so that no fine is lost or not paid on time by the person who caused it.
Carrying out driving license checks
Fleet compliance and the obligations of owner liability – the nightmare of every fleet manager! Who doesn’t know it, actually at the Christmas party – when all the drivers are on-site anyway – one wanted to briefly check the driving licenses. But some of the employees are not there at all, some others do not have their driving license with them and the documentation is done from door to door on a piece of paper, if at all! Unfortunately, the company or the fleet manager has to make sure that no employee is driving without a valid driving license. Therefore, the check should be mandatory, preferably not only once but even twice a year.
Software is also of great benefit here: Digitally, and thus independently of location and time, the driver can be automatically requested to hand in the license, briefly takes a photo with the smartphone, uploads it, and the fleet manager checks the license in the system and releases it. It can be that simple to reduce compliance risks!
Obtaining and comparing leasing offers
The morning begins with an Outlook reminder that a leasing contract expires in six months and the fleet manager needs a second cup of coffee immediately. Every procurement is always a paper war: getting different offers and then finding and comparing the right figures in the vast amounts of paper? A real challenge that can take the best fleet manager to the limit. Actually, you should ask for at least three comparative offers, but honestly – who does that on a regular basis with all the extra work?
The challenge is to digitise the procurement process with the help of software – requesting offers, having them read in, and then being able to compare the relevant components at a glance – multi-bidding and tendering made easy! With Avrios Marketplace we've tried to make this process super simple.
