6 Benefits From Investing in Fleet Management Software

Six Benefits of Investing in Fleet Management Software

By: Matt Reinhart

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For heavy equipment rental companies that want to improve the efficiency of their operation, an investment in technology plays a substantial role. For many fleet owners, choosing and implementing a fleet management software solution can develop into a complex process that can take months or even years to complete. The longer you take to make your decision, the longer you wait to start saving time, saving money and increasing efficiency across your company.

What is often overlooked is how implementing fleet management software affects the end-user experience (the employee) and the customer. Instead, discussions in boardrooms revolve around cost, scalability and ROI. Below are six benefits of investing in fleet management software that go beyond the boardroom:

1. Go Paperless

The majority of heavy equipment rental companies use some form of software, but still rely on paper-based systems for all or part of what they do. With a centralized system and mobile app, jobs flow from the first point of contact (salesperson) to the dispatch office, then to the operator in the field and back to clerical and service staff without a single piece of paper being printed.

Quotes get converted into jobs and jobs get dispatched, field personnel receive their job tickets on a smartphone or tablet where they can capture signatures and input labor hours. Finally, clerical staff receives pertinent billing information digitally in real-time.

2. Accelerate your Payment Cycle

Getting paid more quickly for the services your business provides impacts your bottom line. Investing in a tool that helps reduce the time it takes for you to get paid is common sense. With fleet management software, you can keep vital clerical processes like accounts payable, payroll and receivables running fast. Information is input to a system only once. It then flows from quote to invoice electronically with minimal additional data entry. A job, for example, can be marked as completed on a crane operator’s tablet and his hours entered prior to him arriving back at the crane yard or corporate office. Staff at the office receive data in real-time so they can quickly process invoices without delay – ultimately leading to you getting paid faster by your customers.

3. Simplify Scheduling

The dispatch department can be one of the most stressful and complicated areas of your company. It is the nerve center of most fleet-oriented companies and a place where costly mistakes can happen. Using a centralized fleet management system for scheduling provides visibility for real-time monitoring of assigned jobs as well as unit and staff availability. Additionally, centralizing the scheduling data allows for accurate job details to flow through the system for all staff to view as needed. Last minute changes become more transparent, emergency jobs are easier to fulfill and your dispatch department can move from stressful to more efficient.

4. Mobilize your Workforce while reducing risk and liability

Sometimes it can be hard for team members to collaborate while out of the office, but with a mobile app you can communicate in real-time from any job site back to your yard, branch office or corporate headquarters. Operators in the field can receive job tickets on their tablet the night before. An app allows field personnel to fill out safety checklists and quickly and easily capture digital signatures to timestamp approvals before work begins. These functions promote safety and accountability during the work day, but also serve as a digital trail to reduce risk for everyone involved. If you are not leveraging the ubiquity of smartphones or tablets, you’re missing an opportunity to increase efficiency.

5. Improve Customer Satisfaction

Happy customers are critical to the success of any business. A centralized system gives you a full view of every aspect of your business 24/7. You can easily track all of your people and fleet resources throughout the day. Easily adjust to customer changes, always have the correct personnel and equipment on the job, invoice quickly and keep your customers happy with consistent reliable output made easy because of your fleet management software.

6. Understand your business (and bottom line) better

Get real-time intelligence that lets you see patterns and trends that can negatively affect your business. Allow fleet management software to streamline every step so information only needs to be input once. Once information is properly put in a wealth of data and analytics can be examined. Equipment utilization reports, service history, labor, job profitability and much more.While it is certainly encouraging to know your equipment is in the field performing work, fleet management software provides crucial information about the profitability of individual jobs as well as the cost of maintaining the equipment including labor, parts and overhead. This information is vital to a sustainable long-term business model in an environment of ever-increasing competition and thinner margins.

When you make the decision to invest and implement fleet management software you are investing in your company’s future. Some benefits come quickly and others take time, but the longer you wait the farther ahead your competitors will be.