SynX Blog

Forecasting the fleet workload is always a challenge, but times are close when business starts to be crazy. With about one month to go for the Black Friday shopping madness and around 60 days far from Christmas, it is definitely time to plan for your fleet workload – and we might even be late.

With the Black Friday appointment becoming a fixed presence in our calendar and with Christmas being the busiest time for business of the whole year, the pressure on fleet managers starts to become higher and higher. But what is impacting on fleets and making your workload and responsibilities increase, what should you consider in forecasting your workload at this particular time of the year?

1. More business. It is certainly no mystery that Black Friday shopping might be the prelude to the Christmas presents madness, or maybe just another opportunity to get that highly desired item that suddenly gets a lot of discount. Be it for one reason or for another, shops and business are busiest than ever and yourself need to keep up with your competitors and offer a Black Friday offer – if you haven’t done it yet!
   
   
2. All the roads lead to… home. It is just not simply the busiest time on the road for those who go to shopping malls, but also for those who come to your place to deliver parcels, as Internet is growing as everyone’s favourite shopping place for Black Friday and Christmas (and any other time of the year). According to the research conducted by the Royal Automobile Club Foundation for Motoring Ltd and published in the work “The Implications of Internet Shopping Growth on the Van Fleet and Traffic Activity”, e-Commerce parcel volumes are growing at 9% annually. In 2016, the total market in the sole UK for e-commerce deliveries was 2.7bn packages of which 1.8bn were for the “business-to-consumer” segment. The market for online e-commerce parcels is also expected to grow by 600 million parcels between 2015 and 2020 covering both delivered and click and collect. With such impressive numbers, you’d better get ready for the higher workload in order to benefit from the shopping flow.
   
   
3. Seasons change. And here we are not only referring to seasonal business, busiest periods during the year can change, though hardly ever will the period before Christmas ever be quiet. We are talking about the actual season: between autumn and winter, it gets darker earlier, it gets colder, it is a more challenging time for your drivers and your vehicles and traffic can get higher for the less favourable weather conditions (plus the added business…).
   
   
4. Q3 2018: budget and resources left. It is undoubtedly the last part of the year and you have to manage it with what is left – but only if you have not been able to properly plan the activity of the year. If you are able to check the activity of the last years and the hours of driving (and if not, you should be definitely strive for that) you can get a flavour of what will be going on this year – or got it with the right advance.
   
   
5. Excel at customer service at the best cost. Nothing new here: something you need to do all year long, but gets the impact of other busy factors at this particular time.

As we often repeat, there is generally ever increasing emphasis on the importance of fleet compliance and safety. What was initially seen as merely just a box-ticking exercise has recently started to get the attention it deserves as clumsy attempts at cost-saving that compromise safety and compliance must no longer be an option for fleets. But safety and compliance are not only impacted by a company’s investment in risk assessment or wise processes to keep vehicles and fleet documents compliant, there is another huge factor that can definitely make a difference for a safe/unsafe or compliant/uncompliant fleet—we are talking about drivers being fit to drive.

Apart from the necessary certifications, licenses and qualifications that fleet drivers should have in order to perform their daily tasks, their health status is also extremely important as it definitely has consequences on their ability to drive and might be considered in some cases as responsible for driving behaviours bearing similarities to those of impaired driving.

Fleet driver eyesight has been under particular scrutiny recently as a police crackdown was enacted in the UK in the Thames Valley, Hampshire and West Midlands regions during the first days of September; and the last week of September has also been the UK’s National Eye Health Week.

The crackdown during the whole month of September consisted of the police stopping drivers at the roadside and checking their sight was good enough to correctly read a vehicle plate from 20 meters. Anyone not passing the test would have their licence revoked by the DVSA in an attempt to increase the safety of all road users and decrease the risks associated with drivers not having the standard of eyesight necessary for safe driving; for example, not spotting an obstacle on time, not having appropriate reaction times, which can result in dramatic consequences.

Venson, a consultant firm dealing with companies’ duty of care and compliance in fleet management, has shared the results of a study during the same period dealing with drivers’ eyesight. According to their findings, one out of four motorists interviewed were not confident at all they would pass the test posed in the new police crackdown—reading a number plate from 20 meters. Only 39% of the total respondents have expressed confidence in doing it.

According to the current legal settings ruling in the EU, employees who drive for work must have regular eyesight tests, and their employer has a duty of care to confirm drivers are physically able to do their job safely. The consequences include the possibility of prosecution and licence revocation for anyone who breaches the rules.

Drowsy driving is another issue potentially impacting on global road safety and on companies regularly relying on driving as part of their business practices. The effects of driver fatigue are partly similar to those of poor eyesight, with reduced reaction times being key, but also inability to focus, forgetting to take the correct exit on the road or getting lost without realising and constantly drifting from one lane to the other. In other news from the last few days, a research group is currently working on a new type of blood test, the stated aim of which is to detect if drivers have skipped a night’s sleep.

“Missed savings” is one word-pair that should never appear in the fleet manager’s vocabulary as well as “missing opportunity”, but as we all know, sometimes we talk the talk but don’t walk the walk.

It is a fact that costs caused by fleet management or by the use of vehicles are often managed in a very inaccurate way. It might seem surprising, as vehicles that are partly or totally relied upon by companies, in order to develop their business, generate huge costs, accounting for a large proportion of a company’s total expenditure. The good news is that this can be reduced. The not-so-good news is that this cannot happen until your mentality changes and your fleets start to be managed wisely.

So, who is responsible for that? First of all, let’s not point our finger at the fleet manager himself. Fleet managers per se very often do not exist. And herein lies the problem: in most businesses fleets are supporting the business but are not part of its core activity, though vehicle use is essential at some point in the business cycle (but not necessarily seen as part of it). The consequence is that fleet management itself often does not have the necessary resources, and is something relegated to “spare time” in any busy schedule.

When we talk about fleet managers not actually existing, we are certainly not saying vehicles automatically manage themselves, but rather that the role of a fleet manager solely dedicated to vehicle operations is uncommon. It is more like the opposite: people in the organigram of a specific company normally have the additional responsibility of managing the costs of a fleet, which depends on whatever time is left over after completing their principal job.

If you have originally been hired for a specific position and incidentally have started taking care of your fleet, or if you are the business owner or financial director and have progressively acquired the responsibilities that come under the remit of fleet manager, you probably don’t really have the expertise required for the role or maybe the resources or the knowledge needed in order to manage vehicles professionally. Nothing personal: managing a fleet demands tools and experience and not having them might lead to management inefficiencies and, therefore, missed savings or opportunities: you might easily be unaware of which measures to adopt in order to prevent vehicle damage, minimise wear and tear or decrease accidents (to mention just a few).

The consequence of a lack of experience and expertise in fleet management often means that a fleet is not managed using the adequate tools, or the optimal processes and global fleet data is not recorded on a regular basis. If anyone willing to make decisions on the fleet does not have such data handy or if the management is not furnished with adequate data, then how could you possibly detect opportunities for savings and business?

We know that these problems can be solved: we can offer the expertise needed to guide you and properly manage your fleet and its costs, providing you with savings and business opportunities. We can help you determine what the real costs impacting on your fleet are and how they can be influenced: there are a lot of potential savings waiting for you!

September has not only been the back-to-school month for companies whose business relies on vehicles, but also a period for balancing the different activities associated with their commercial operation and reviewing their readiness in terms of roadworthiness, safety and compliance.

A study on compliance inspections carried out on drivers’ hours and an RSA investigation on bus conditions in Ireland have revealed that the number of inspections into the verification of fleet compliance is considerable to the extent that companies need to have a preventive compliance strategy and never compromise safety in order to generate savings. But another inspection campaign, conducted this time by the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) of Ireland, targeting risk assessment processes, has revealed that 48% of Irish companies do not have a vehicle risk programme covering risk assessment related to their activities.

This latter campaign focussed on dedicated inspections carried out between April 9 and April 20, 2018 and published in September. In that period of time 145 inspections focussing on transport and vehicles risk have been conducted in different activity sectors, with Transport and Storage, Manufacturing and Wholesale and Retail being the most prominent. A second round of 149 inspections was conducted up until June and also counted in the results.

Driving for work was actually considered in 229 out of a total of 294 inspections as a relevant activity, but only for 49% of these companies was driving for work actually addressed in their safety statement. Despite working with vehicles being considered a high risk activity, a considerable proportion of workplaces still do not fully appreciate the statistical evidence, while a consistently high percentage (46%) of fatal incidents are connected with vehicle use.

Despite the stress made by all organisations involved and the results yielded by the different studies and the actions taken by these road safety and health and safety authorities, a lot more commitment is needed by employers in order to tackle risks related to the use of vehicles, as well as more effort needed in the management of such activities.

During the whole month of October, free driving for work seminars will be conducted by the RSA and the HSA in collaboration with An Garda Síochána, to outline legal requirements for companies regarding fleet and vehicle management, including information on best practices and how to manage drivers and provide guidance in risk management. The first two appointments were on the 4th and 5th of October, but there are two more left, they are for the 24th of October in Fota Island Resort in Cork and the 27th in Leopardstown Pavilion in Dublin.

Time for letter G in our A to Z series, and an opportunity to review what has probably been the primary technology behind the revolution of the fleet sector—GPS vehicle tracking. GPS (Global Positioning System) is satellite navigation technology that, by way of a specific receiver, can transmit the GPS coordinates of an object, thus pinpointing its precise location on Earth. GPS tracking is now widespread after being first introduced for military purposes—vehicle tracking technology and telematics have been around for almost 20 years now; these days it is possible to track virtually everything.

In our complete guide to vehicle tracking for fleets we have provided a panorama of this technology: the type of trackers that are used in fleets, the advantages of the system, plus some tips on how to choose your vehicle tracking system and on the main features you can find in GPS vehicle tracking software. With this post, we would like to answer some questions that are still often asked, especially by those who are getting interested in this technology but still have not implemented it into their fleet.

1. Can’t I just track the position of a driver via their phone? You would not necessarily be tracking the position of the vehicle of your driver if you were tracking their work phones; there is always the chance that the phone is switched off or the tracking can easily be inactivated. GPS tracking and GPS vehicle tracking are two different things—of course you are able to find your phone if it gets lost, but tracking a vehicle is a completely different story.
   
   
2. Can I just start tracking my vehicle straight away? It really doesn’t take long. You should install a tracker inside the vehicle and from there the vehicle tracking software will start receiving vehicle data and match them with the GPS location of the vehicle. Which data might depend on the type of package and contract you have with your GPS vehicle tracking provider.
   
   
3. Are GPS vehicle tracking systems and fleet management systems the same thing? GPS vehicle tracking systems usually include software packages that have features merely related to location and positions of vehicles. Fleet management systems tend to have a larger number of features, including safety alerts, fuel modules, maintenance software, but it actually depends on what your provider can offer. It’s not necessarily the case that someone defines their software as a GPS vehicle tracking system and it only involves very basic features. You will only experience the full potential of a specific vehicle tracking software package for yourself once you see a demonstration or sign up for a free trial—so it is definitely something you should check out with your provider.
   
   
4. Can a GPS tracking solution be integrated with my back-office system? APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) generally allow integration of some GPS tracking systems and some providers already offer them, but once again it is something definitely worth checking with your provider. If you are looking for a specific GPS tracking feature that might not necessarily be immediately visible, make sure to inquire into that as well.

After a study last month revealed that 52% of transport companies experienced compliance inspections, both on the roadside and also regarding driver’ hours regulations, a report by the Road Safety Authority (RSA) of Ireland, made public by RTE’s programme This Week, made for negative news for September where compliance was concerned.

According to RSA data revealed during the RTE broadcast, 51% of buses inspected during the year 2017 by the RSA were found not to be compliant and failed roadside inspections, with, alarmingly, around a third of the buses inspected subject to major defects—bearing in mind that school buses obviously account for a substantial proportion of the bus vehicles involved in the checks.

The RTE programme provided a figure breakdown of this worrying data, where 873 buses account for the total of bus vehicles inspected, 445 accounted for those failing to comply with safety regulations, 268 actually had major defects and 37 showed dangerous defects—the range of defects which immediately allows authorities to stop that vehicle from operating and take it off the road—with all the consequences this might lead to.

The concern over these vehicles and especially the school buses is actually nothing new. Reinforcement actions over the roadworthiness of school buses have been put in place by the RSA for the school year 2017/2018 following a negative record dating back to 2016: 1,207 buses were inspected by RSA enforcement officers at the roadside and, while again a considerable proportion (50%) had defects, one in five (20%) showed major faults. The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) in the UK followed a similar programme when some buses were found to be defective, apparently after clumsy cost-cutting attempts had impacted on safety and ended up actually costing operators their licence.

According again to the RTE broadcast, RSA had expressed their concerns by way of a letter sent to Bus Eireann, the major operator of school buses, which is ultimately responsible for almost 4,500 vehicles, via private operators, that bring 117,000 children to and from school. In the letter, Liz O’Donnel, chairperson for the RSA, claimed that RSA roadside inspections yielded little progress in terms of roadworthiness and compliance improvement. Bus Eireann’s spokesman said the company has a robust system in place, though the RSA seemed to claim the company had contacted them to get more information on the programme for high-risk operators (typically school buses)—which it is not strictly connected to running a compliant fleet.

After the broadcast, the Coach Tourism and Transport Council of Ireland did not release any statement, though among the private bus industry some sources pointed the finger at high fuel and insurance costs, together with falling payments of school transport operators as the main causes for the safety breaches.

When helping fleets to better manage their resources, stay compliant and save money on their total costs, we are often surprised at some companies who still seem to have not understood the potential of digital fleet management systems to keep track of global spend, reduce risks or to operate vehicles with absolute peace of mind without fearing the eventuality of inspections. Some of them may remain unconvinced about the potential of these tools, or feel they already have a suitable method in place to stay compliant and safe even if it isn’t digitalised.

With the recent studies about compliance inspections coming to light, though, companies might actually be inclined to re-examine their position if they do not have a digitalised system to properly keep track of activity and the compliance of their fleet: according to some very recent news, around half of the total fleets in Europe have been impacted by either roadside inspections or compliance inspections focussing on drivers’ hours regulations.

If you feel you still might not be ready for such an event or either just don’t trust digital methods for fleet tracking, a good idea is to check if the applications work for you by signing up for a free trial—we actually bet you won’t be able to do without them once you’ve tried out these tools. If you are still not ready for the trial, we will give you five extra reasons why signing up for a free fleet software trial would be perfect for you!

#1 – No risks. No strings attached, hassle and risk free: free fleet software trials accustoms you to the technology and allows for the opportunity to test its potential for quite a reasonable length of time, so you have the freedom to evaluate the tools without taking financial risks straight away and are able to see if they would be a good fit for your fleet.

#2 – Get familiarised. If you are among those who do not especially feel tech-savvy, free fleet software trials are actually a great opportunity for you to get more familiarised with fleet applications before you actually commit—you will see just how easy they are to use and also the depth of visibility offered!

#3 – Experience full visibility. One of the great advantages of fleet compliance software and tracking application is the incredible visibility of fleet operations, vehicles, staff and procedures they offer—something impossible to reproduce by manual methods.

#4 – Experience paperless compliance. You might have heard of paperless methods to manage fleets or either maintenance inspections or compliance checks—if you begin a free trial, you can actually see how this works, with huge savings in terms of time, administration and archive space.

#5 – Check out the needs of your fleet and any other feature. If you have the opportunity of getting started with a free fleet software trial, while the trial is still ongoing you might actually check if you can have access to any other feature maybe not specifically appearing in your trial pack or to any report you might wish to check. The fleet experts that have created the trial pack can help you with this.

If you wish to see all the benefits of a tracking system or compliance inspection software, you now have an opportunity to begin a free trial of our fleet tracking or compliance and maintenance inspection app—it’s a great opportunity if you want to enjoy all the benefits we have detailed in points 1 to 5!

If you think fleet compliance is not the top priority for our business, you really ought to read on in order to demonstrate just why you’d be wrong. A study conducted by a telematics company and recently published by Fleet News has revealed that more than half of the companies owning fleets in the whole European territory have been the subject of compliance inspections—so the likelihood that your company will be audited by authorities for compliance is not just a matter of “bad luck”. Inspections happen; and in any case they shouldn’t be the sole motivating factor in getting your fleet in order where compliance and administrative paperwork is concerned.

Drivers’ hours compliance has been the objective of inspections carried out in 2017, but the research also reveals that almost half of European fleets (43%) have been involved in roadside inspections (between 1 and 5) in the same period of time and that even 41% of businesses that rely on driving had to cancel between 1 and 10 jobs they wanted to assign to drivers as they had no visibility on the available driving hours of their drivers.

The study shed some light on how companies are lacking real-time availability of driving hours, as they are still relying on more manual methods like the remote download of tachograph data, that to be fair provide a relatively easy way of processing driving hours to see if they comply with the regulations, but such an operation can only be done if vehicles are not on the road. So how can businesses anticipate if driving hours will exceed the statutory limits, as the chance of discovering breaches of regulations only after data download can be very high?

Apart from the possible sanctions deriving from incorrectly recording driving hours, roadside inspections are an added source of worry for fleet managers and companies operating vehicles. Roadside inspections really ought to be considered a fact of life rather than an unfortunate turn of events: but apart from the consequences from the perspective of violations that might involve financial penalties and the stopping of vehicles for a period of time and the need to find temporary replacements, if one of your vehicles is found to be non-compliant, it means it has already taken risks. This could be for exceeding the hours your employees are on the road or because the inspecting authority has found out something that should have been identified through a regular maintenance regime—something you definitely should have in place.

If you are struggling with having full visibility on your vehicles, as most companies do, and with strategies to successfully pass roadside inspections, make sure you do not miss this potentially game changing opportunity: a free trial of our tracking system or our compliance and maintenance module. Get in touch if you have any questions—stop relying on your luck holding out and on not being singled out for an unwelcome roadside inspection and just enjoy the benefits of a safe and efficient business!

It would be difficult not to immediately associate the letter F in our A-Z of fleet management series with the word “fleet”. But fleet is our overarching theme, so we need to find another topic of focus associated with the letter F, one that is a major expense for anyone operating vehicles commercially, at least for the time being—fuel.

Being an essential element for vehicles to run, fuel is at least for now, in fact, the largest contributor to fleet operating costs and for this reason subject to the most attention. With regards to fuel and fleets, fuel management relates to methods, tools, strategies and also best practices to use in order to maintain, control and monitor fuel consumption. Being the most essential element for vehicles to run means fuel consumption is unavoidable and something that is accepted unquestioningly, but on the other hand that doesn’t mean some serious thought cannot go into putting strategies in place to reduce consumption and, consequently, the sometimes frightening levels of expenditure.

When considering these strategies, there are different approaches regarding fuel itself:

How much do fleets pay for the fuel? This vital element in a fleet operation is not stable but depends on constant market fluctuations and trends that often cannot be predicted and alternate between periods of ups and downs, peaks and uncertainty. This has led to the investigation, by fleets, of a tool called ‘fuel hedging’, which is a contractual instrument used to reduce exposure to higher fuel costs by allowing a company to establish a fixed or capped cost, similar to the concept of hedging in currency and commodity markets where investment risks are managed.

How do fleets pay for the fuel? Though it might seem rudimentary, not all companies have switched to alternative payment methods such as fuel cards, but instead use, for example, cash or personal credit cards that is later reimbursed by way of an expense report, or they use company-provided purchasing or other credit card options, reconciled via an expense report. While these latter methods enable drivers to purchase fuel when it is needed, they will not really help the control and management of fuel by the fleet manager as they do not record mileage, place of purchase and other key data of interest. Fuel cards would help better manage fuel expense, especially if connected to a global fleet management system able to provide real time data on journeys and safety.

How is fuel consumed and how can consumption be reduced? It’s worth pointing out that often quite shocking levels of fuel consumption result from trips that aren’t strictly necessary. If you start tracking your fleet, you will quite likely discover unnecessary journeys or detours have been taken, or that more fuel efficient routes are available. How you drive also has a considerable impact as speeding and dangerous driving are closely correlated with global fuel consumption. Fuel theft, probably not the first thought that pops into the mind of trusting fleet managers, can also, unfortunately, become a factor that impacts on the bottom line. Monitoring the use of fuel via a digitalised system that integrates your fuel card and provides information on idling and dangerous driving patterns is a way for your business to be aware of how every drop of fuel is spent and act directly on the sources of fuel cost to cut consumption.

Whenever companies allow vehicles to be used privately by employees or private vehicles that are also used for work purposes, they are all generally required to keep a good record of the mileage travelled, particularly in this case where business and private travelling need to be separated.

Apart from the risk of not fully controlling the safety and vehicle roadworthiness if it does not fully belong to the company and the difficulty in sharing responsibilities and having full control over compliance usually linked to grey fleets, companies often ignore the fact that the capturing of business mileage for tax purposes and travel and subsistence reimbursements can still constitute a risk for fleets as they could be susceptible to accusations of mileage fraud.

It seemingly isn’t unusual for companies to have inaccurate mileage despite the high risk of receiving fines. Inaccuracy in mileage recording can be due to different approaches to the logging of business or work mileage:

Rounding of mileage: legitimate journeys distances might actually be rounded in their mileage as it is easier to do due to the use of spreadsheets or manual odometer recordings, but even as a result of acting in good faith they can still draw suspicion from the authorities and constitute fraud.

Wrong business journey attribution: according to the specific legal settings, personal stops or daily commutes do not belong to business mileage and should not be grouped under the distances travelled with that purpose in the logbooks.

Sharing a business journey with all the parties involved reporting it: it might happen for some specific meetings that employees share the same vehicle on a specific occurrence but then all of them report it in their mileage capturing because of the lack of information on how to correctly do it or the lack of tools for this particular admin task.

Lack of employee knowledge: in order to correctly administer business mileage and travel and subsistence reimbursements, employees need to be aware of the proper rules of recordkeeping rather than relying on prior experience that is not founded on a solid company process. This often translates into business journeys not being reported or private ones considered business by mistake.

Massive use of spreadsheets: how many times has an error in an excel formula happened to you? Think about what might happen if drivers completely depend on spreadsheets: not only can formulas be responsible for mistakes but also typing in the wrong numbers or copying over wrong amounts.

Manual work and lack of a digital solution: this is another typical scenario where the additional issue is that financial departments and anyone else interested in fleet digital data does not have access to the crucial information that can actually help to better manage vehicles.

All the scenarios and approaches presented are quite common in fleets, but mileage claims do not necessarily have to lead to fraud. If you have tracking systems that help determine with exactitude the journeys to and from locations, along with their purpose, and organise them into reports, you can get so much more than the bare minimum that a spreadsheet offers, with the peace of mind that comes from eliminating potential legal problems arising from human error. Make sure you get in touch if you need to track your fleet journeys.