Whether it is the manufacturing or transportation industry, technology is revolutionising how businesses operate these days and levelling up customers’ expectations. Indeed, the Covid-19 pandemic was a blessing in disguise as it compelled more and more organisations to adopt digitised processes and work efficiently even in the new normal of remote working. Nowadays, customers want every single update on their purchase orders and also to track their delivery status, making real-time delivery updates a standard feature or service.
Likewise, logistics and fleet companies can take advantage of technology, gain real-time visibility of their fleets and operations, and run their business efficiently. GPS-empowered fleet management software can help them to track their vehicles and goods in real-time, gain more agility and control over operations, and drive more profits.
Such fleet management solutions help fleet owners to plan, allocate jobs, record data, track vehicles and assets, and manage all fleet movement in real-time through a single dashboard. Not to forget, these insights can be read and understood by even a layman as they are presented in an easy-to-understand format. This way, they have access to accurate information on the status of goods, location of vehicles and drivers, ETA (estimated time of arrival) of shipment, changes in weather conditions, breakdowns, and much more.
Ultimately, you can foster data-driven decision-making, enhance business operations, and increase customer satisfaction when you can make data-driven decision-making. More or less, real-time visibility is the need of the hour as 84% of fleet and supply chain managers find lack of visibility their biggest challenge. Here’s how enabling real-time visibility can solve most of their challenges.
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Improved Planning and Job Allocation
You can plan your upcoming jobs accordingly with the real-time location of vehicles and shipments. Using the GPS trackers for fleet management, fleet managers can dispatch the nearest driver to the job and get deliveries completed faster. This also helps them to plan the shortest and the most efficient routes that avoid traffic, roadblocks, and heavily populated areas. On top of that, when fleet heads have access to all data, they can ensure optimum utilisation of resources and increase the overall capacity.
Additionally, real-time visibility enables precise calculation and communication of the arrival time to customers considering traffic or any related delays.
Faster Comeback
Perhaps, unexpected situations can disrupt business operations, including accidents, thefts, extreme weather conditions, traffic, congestion, etc. But since you’re basically communicating with vehicles and drivers in real time, you can avoid the impact of such unforeseen situations.
For example, if a breakdown happens, the fleet management software notifies fleet managers in real-time, and managers can send additional help instantly. This helps to minimise downtime, and you’re able to call for corrective measures before problems lead to significant losses.
Improved Communication and Team Productivity
Earlier, manually keeping track of when the shipment was to be picked, from which warehouse, allocating the job to employees and drivers, etc., was time-consuming, misleading, and erroneous. One slight miscommunication or omission of information could hamper the flow of the entire operation. What made it even worse was that everybody was clueless about the shipment status in transit. Though the advent of mobile phones made it a little easier to take follow-ups, related challenges like poor connectivity and distracted driving were hindrances to solving the core problem.
But now, such minor details about shipment and vehicles are available at fingertips, that too, in real-time. The fleet management software seamlessly connects drivers/employees and fleet heads and ensures precise and error-free communication. Likewise, it enhances team productivity as real-time visibility keeps everyone on track and helps overcome daunting processes that typically take the most time of the day.
And if something goes unplanned, the system automatically intimates about order delays, giving managers the flexibility and bandwidth to focus on mitigating the risks. The two-way communication feature lets drivers immediately contact administrators in emergencies and problems.
Monitoring Driving Behaviour and Vehicle Performance
Along with tracking the vehicle’s location, you can monitor drivers’ driving behaviour and vehicle performance. Vehicle telematics sends real-time alerts to fleet managers on driving behaviour such as excessive speeding, hard braking, cornering, etc. With comprehensive reporting and analysis, you can access all data points and provide additional training to drivers if needed.
Likewise, you also get information about unscheduled stops and routes, engine health, tire pressure, fuel consumption, and carbon emissions. Such data can help you plan preventive maintenance schedules for vehicles and avoid breakdowns.
Access to such details in real-time ensures accurate KPI benchmarking, enhances drivers’ productivity, avoids accidents and collisions, and improves your brand reputation. By having access to data on vehicle performance, it will allow a fleet manager to track expenses and increase the bottom line. To expose additional insights into the vehicle’s performance, you may want to consider having a fuel card. A fuel card will allow you to track your fuel spend per vehicle and therefore, will highlight any spikes in fuel spend. To learn more on how do fuel cards work, it could be worthwhile reading the true benefits to deploying such cards across your fleet.
Improved Customer Experience
47% of customers will not order from a brand that does not provide enough visibility about deliveries. But around 93% of customers want to be updated about each stage of the delivery process. So, ensuring last-mile visibility to customers is the need of the hour if you want to grow your business. Real-time visibility helps customers to know live updates on the shipment progress and keep track of the delivery. Moreover, it can also help fleet admins accommodate last-minute changes of customers and quickly change delivery workflows on the go.
Nowadays, many companies have also started providing electronic proof of deliveries through which delivery agents can capture time-stamped images and signatures as proof of a complete delivery. These documents or data are synced with the central fleet management software, letting administrators know about successful and failed deliveries in real-time with supporting data.
At the end of the day, offering flexibility and smooth services can help you to improve customer experience and retention, thereby increasing your bottom line. Remember that happy customers equals to more profits!
Gain Real Success
Real-time visibility assists managers in overseeing their work on the go and creates extra room to help them focus on strategic growth. Such visibility is very critical to business growth as you can make data-driven decisions aligned with your business goals. And combined with good customer service, you can develop a strong position in the market. Nevertheless, we can expect technological advancements to introduce new capabilities, making fleet management as ceaseless as possible.