Business Vehicle Tracking: 15 Popular Reasons to Invest

If it isn’t broken, why fix it? Your drivers seem busy, your customers are happy, and your profit margins are steady, so why should your business consider commercial vehicle tracking using fleet management services and solutions? Because few technologies offer such wide-reaching benefits.

From direct cost savings to improved processes across departments and better customer service, here are 15 reasons to invest in business vehicle tracking systems and technology.

1. Improved road safety and a reduction in accidents

Fleets with vehicle tracking systems installed tend to be safer,p as more aware drivers mean fewer accidents. One way to improve driver safety dramatically is by providing feedback in real-time with an in-cab coach.

This small device gives immediate feedback on unsafe behaviours, such as speeding and harsh accelerating or braking. This can then make drivers a lot more aware of what kinds of unsafe driving habits they may have developed, so they can correct their behaviour straight away. This can then reduce the risk of accidents, making your fleet safer overall.

2. A reduction in the costs associated with running a fleet

You’re running a business, so your bottom line is always going to be a priority. And, there are a number of ways that tracking your fleet vehicles can help you lower costs — some of which we’ll look at later — but the most obvious place to start is fuel.

Through better driving, less idling, and improved optimisation, the right fleet management solutions will improve your fleet’s efficiency, having a direct impact on your fuel usage. In fact, we’ve found that fleet tracking can save a business an average of £660 per vehicle each year. The cost of fuel makes up the largest proportion of this, at £240.

3. Increased service excellence and customer satisfaction

Having more control over your fleet means being able to provide a better service to your customers.

If you know the locations of your vehicles, you can provide more accurate arrival or delivery times to your end customer. Plus, by making your fleet more efficient you’ll be able to fit more tasks into a day, improving turnaround times and, ultimately, your customers’ satisfaction levels.

4. It’s easier to monitor your CO2 emissions and provide evidence of your sustainability

Sustainability is becoming increasingly important for transport and logistics businesses that care not only about public perception but also the environment.

Fleet tracking gives you the power to monitor and reduce your CO2 emissions by improving your drivers’ behaviour and fleet utilisation. Each year, our customers save a combined 230,000 tonnes of CO2. We also offer a unique CO2 certification scheme, verified by the Energy Savings Trust, that allows you to demonstrate your business’s green credentials.

5. You can eradicate paper-based tasks and administration

Digital transformation might sound scary, but it needn’t be. With fleet tracking, there are a number of processes across several departments that can be streamlined to save time, reduce waste, and – most importantly – make your day-to-day easier.

Driver expense reports, timesheets, and legal requirements like vehicle checks can all be digitised to benefit your business. We can even provide a special solution that helps you transfer all your paper processes to a bespoke and agile digital workflow.

6. You’ll be able to use mobile apps to empower your drivers

Give your drivers more autonomy to make them feel trusted and engaged. Our MICHELIN Connected Fleet app gives drivers the power to perform important tasks with a few simple swipes and taps. This includes submitting accurate mileage expense reports, performing mandatory vehicle checks, and tracking their own driver behaviour scores to encourage safer driving.

7. You can promote driving best practices

A good business vehicle tracking solution will include a driver behaviour solution that’s practical and encourages improvement. Our solution rates drivers on three scores: Smoother (harsh braking/accelerating), Safer (speeding), and Cleaner (idling). This lets you identify which specific areas your drivers excel or need to improve in. League tables and rankings can be implemented as part of a driving behaviour programme where the best drivers are rewarded.

8. It’s easy to analyse your fleet performance

The best way to ensure you receive an impressive ROI from your fleet tracking solution is to analyse your data to uncover insights and hidden potential. You can run reports on a wide variety of topics, from fleet activity to distance travelled, or fuel usage to maintenance.

Identifying where you’re doing well can help you transfer these good practices to areas you’re underperforming in, and reports using reliable data can help you build a business case for improvement through change.

9. You’ll be able to monitor and review your asset utilisation

We’ve already mentioned fleet utilisation, but how is it measured?

A simple utilisation report within our platform will tell you the percentage of your target time that each vehicle is used for. So, for example, if your goal is for each vehicle to drive 40 hours in total over the course of a week, you can quickly see how vehicles are performing against this target. If you notice that several vehicles are significantly below the 40 hours, it may be that you can make big savings by amending existing routes or schedules and reducing the size of your fleet.

10. You can enhance your existing IT systems with fleet data

The beauty of vehicle tracking is that it produces digital data that can be used in other processes.

Having a connected fleet opens up the possibility of creating a connected business. APIs offer a great way to link your fleet management data to existing IT systems, such as HR, finance, and job management systems, automating many of the processes that would otherwise be time-consuming.

11. It’ll reduce false claims and insurance costs

Fleet tracking can also lower insurance costs for your business. The safer a fleet, the fewer accidents it has, meaning fewer claims and a reduced premium.

Moreover, your data can be used to help reduce false claims. For example, let’s say you receive a complaint claiming that one of your vehicles caused damage to someone’s car. You can easily verify whether the story is credible by viewing your fleet’s historical data. Our platform has a ‘Been There’ feature that will tell you which vehicles drove within a certain radius of a particular address, and exactly what time they were there.

12. You can streamline tasks with automation and notifications

Time-consuming tasks like running reports can be fully automated, saving you and your employees time. Create custom reports and then set them to run on a regular basis so, for example, every Monday morning the reports you need are sent straight to your inbox.

You can also set up alerts that give you notifications whenever you need to act immediately on something. If you have a fleet that doesn’t operate on the weekend, you can set an alert that will notify you if any of your vehicles move on a Saturday or Sunday, for instance.

13. It will simplify your fleet management and route scheduling

Knowing where your fleet vehicles are at any time is important. You need this information to plan routes and, crucially, react immediately if you have to reschedule jobs or journeys. Commercial vehicle tracking will provide a live overview of your fleet’s locations at all times.

You also have the power to optimise routes to achieve the shortest possible journey times, and instantly find the nearest vehicle to any given location at the click of a button, giving you the agility to react quickly to problems.

14. You’ll be able to deploy vehicle tracking without any downtime

Implementation can be one of the biggest deterrents of investing in fleet management services and solutions. While it’s true that some providers might cause significant disruption to your fleet’s daily activities, it’s possible to manage deployment so that it has minimal impact.

We have a network of hundreds of engineers across the UK who will carry out your installations at a time and location that suits you. Another option is to use a true no-install option, which plugs into a vehicle’s cigarette lighter.

15. It’ll give you evidence of attendance and speed of job completion

If you need to confirm if and when a worker has attended a job, tracking devices can make this possible.

Location, time, and engine status data will tell you exactly when a vehicle arrived at a location, how long they were there for, and when they left. This information can be combined with an external job management system to give you the latest data whenever you need it.

Written by The MICHELIN Connected Fleet team

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