Previously we blogged about some of the benefits a greener fleet can have to commercial businesses with comment from Energy Saving Trust. We talked about the fact that not only can a greener fleet lead to bigger profits, but can also have broader CSR and PR benefits for your organisation. In addition, we put together a handy guide covering five easy steps to downsizing your impact on the environment.
Now we want to take a look at just how important a role data plays in ensuring commercial fleets are as green as possible and how fleet managers can turn this data into genuine business benefit, while doing a bit of CSR along the way.
Telematics solutions have come a long way in recent years, and have become an integral part of many commercial business operations that contain large fleets. Increased sophistication of devices means smarter collection and analysis of data, often in real time. And one of the major benefits is the ability to, and advantages of, making fleets even greener.
Smart driver behaviour products
A host of smart new driver behaviour features in the TomTom Telematics range have been developed to help educate and guide drivers in real time using driver data. Along with providing up-to-date information to the fleet manager, drivers receive live feedback and real time alerts related to their performance. These alerts are designed with driver safety and fuel consumption in mind and monitor things like speeding, harsh steering, heavy braking, over revving and idling. All these alerts can be fed back in real time to the drive to their navigation unit. Information like this as well as real time fuel consumption and instant feedback on their driving style encourages them to adopt a greener, safer driving style. For more on this, our free white paper is available that show you how to cut costs and boost safety by improving driver behaviour.
Intelligent navigation and state of the art route optimisation
Unnecessary mileage caused by poor route planning or the failure to effectively respond to the unpredictable nature of traffic is a major contributor to spiralling costs. Unnecessary idling whilst stationary in traffic increases a fleet’s carbon footprint, and of course fuel costs. Managers need to be aware of changing legislation with regard to measuring carbon footprint.
Choosing a telematics solution means access to real time and historic data, and that in turn can be used to plan more efficiently and also react dynamically to changing conditions. Without this, drivers and managers are reliant on manual communications and updates which can cause delays and customer dissatisfaction.
The navigation device aims to keep the drivers eyes on the road and hands on the wheel by incorporating advanced lane guidance, text-to-speech software for spoken job instructions and voice recognition for inputting address destinations. With fewer distractions and less stress, drivers are able to fully focus on driving efficiently, keeping fuel consumption to a minimum.
Training drivers based on individual performance
Fleet managers can interpret driver behaviour data on individual driver performance in seconds. There’s a wealth of data available, such as speeds travelled, routes taken, driving events that occurred, fuel consumed. However all this data individually is hard to analysis for each individual. Therefore scores and indicators are used to profile individual drivers, when then makes it easier for managers to stack rank drivers. This data can then be used to pinpoint problem areas and build bespoke training programmes that suit specific drivers’ needs.
Drivers and driver behaviour have big impact on vehicle TCO and the driver has an impact on up to 30% of the overall cost. These are areas such as fuel, service and maintenance costs, wear and tear, and damage with regard to depreciation. By using data to identify areas of improvement for each driver, fleet managers can address and eradicate costly behaviour at an early stage. Across any size of commercial fleet, these minor changes can reap significant reward.
It’s clear that harnessing data can have a profound effect on keeping your fleet green and efficient, as well as keeping costs down in the process. It’s the driving force behind fine-tuning your operation to make it ultra efficient. It’s important that any telematics solution used is capable of monitoring on the right data, and feeds this back in the form of useful and insightful reports and dashboards – so you can see at a glance the health of your fleet. Allowing you to boost efficiency, cut costs, create good PR and engage in a little CSR to boot.
