Five ways telematics can help maintain your vehicles for a higher performing fleet
Five ways telematics can help maintain your vehicles for a higher performing fleet
Your fleet is one of your company’s biggest assets – so keeping it in top condition is vital to running a productive fleet.
On-going wear-and-tear, aggressive driving and ad-hoc maintenance schedules can result in unexpected, and expensive, repairs. Across an entire fleet, those costs can add up fast.
Here’s five ways EROAD helps you proactively maintain your vehicles for a safe, compliant, high performing fleet
1. EROAD automates your fleet’s preventative maintenance to help save costs
A well maintained fleet can create positive spin-offs across a range of areas for your business including reduced idle times, improved fuel efficiency, less carbon emissions as well as less on-road issues.
It can also reduce vehicle down-time and better manage costs, particularly those caused by unexpected breakdowns and repairs, while operating your entire fleet more efficiently.
EROAD’s Service and Maintenance helps you efficiently manage the preventative maintenance of your fleet and identify small problems before they become costly ones. You can better manage your operating costs, and also have peace of mind you have done everything possible to ensure your vehicles are performing at their best and are safe on the road.
In effect, EROAD’s telematics platform simplifies your vehicle servicing by using real time, usage-based data to create preventative maintenance scheduling. It tracks metrics like time lapsed, mileage, fuel usage and engine hours, making it easier to identify when a vehicle is due for servicing and repairs.
Monitoring your vehicle mileage to remotely identify service intervals and scheduling is one of the most effective ways to manage your fleet’s health. This is because EROAD’s usage-based approach combines the best of traditional maintenance plans with the power of utilisation data to:
- Automatically highlight when service and maintenance is due
- Minimise planning time
- Capture and rectify small defects before they become big issues
- Forecast maintenance budgets
- Reduce the risk of over or under-maintaining your assets
- Reduce off-road downtime
- Better manage operating costs
Automating your maintenance scheduling ensures your vehicles stay in good working order for longer periods of time, which can also boost your vehicle, or equipment’s, ROI.
For example, regularly highlighting simple tasks such as checking tyre pressures or regular oil changes can improve fuel efficiency. Given fuel is one of the largest operational costs for a fleet, this could add up to a better bottom line over time.
What’s more, EROAD’s telematics software can help reduce human error or oversights when it comes to regular scheduling of maintenance given you have access to a complete service history archive at the touch of a button, which also helps support your compliance and insurance requirements.
2. EROAD helps capture defects and maintenance issues in real-time
EROAD’s Inspect provides you, or your drivers, with the ability to capture defects on the spot and action their repair to ensure they don’t become expensive issues down the road.
It allows your drivers to carry out pre and post-trip vehicle inspections – using either EROAD’s App on a mobile device or the in-vehicle Ehubo2 device – to record any defects that need to be fixed or maintenance to be completed.
EROAD’s Inspect enables you to create customisable inspection templates that match the requirements of your vehicles and assets. Any items that are reported by drivers as failed, or that need attention, then feed straight into EROAD’s defect board – enabling you to view, prioritise and action reported defects at any time.
You can generate reports that provide a full audit trail of defects which capture the original inspection record, along with its resolution and who actioned each item.
Not only does it make the process easier for your drivers to complete, and therefore more likely to be done properly, it can also serve as proof of your compliance with your health and safety obligations. It also helps deliver cost efficiencies, improves assurance levels, minimises liabilities and reduced vehicle downtown.
3. EROAD helps boost driver accountability for vehicle maintenance and handling
Your drivers put your vehicles through hundreds, or even thousands, of kilometres of drive time and constant wear and tear each week and play a critical role in the ongoing safety and maintenance of your fleet.
Carrying out pre and post-trip inspections (via EROAD’s Inspect) is just one way to ensure potential vehicle issues are rectified quickly. Your drivers also need to be accountable for the impact their driving behaviour has on your vehicles when they are behind the wheel.
Speed, harsh braking, cornering and acceleration all have an impact on your fuel and maintenance bills given vehicles use more power and fuel when driving harder or at higher speeds.
For instance, the power needed to travel at 90 km/hr is 20% less than the power required to travel at 100 km/hr. Research carried out by EROAD shows that reducing peak speeds by just 8 km/hr can save 10% to 15% in fuel consumption. *
Organisations that pay consistent attention to EROAD’s driver behaviour analytics have 38% fewer speeding events than organisations that don’t view them at all.
EROAD study, June 2016, across 1344 organisations*
Other studies have also shown aggressive driving can impact fuel efficiency by as much as 33% on open roads and up to 5% in built-up areas.**
EROAD’s helps identify correctable driving behaviors and allows you to quickly address them with real-time coaching. In effect, using EROAD’s telematics platform can increase driver accountability, facilitate better driving choices at the same time as allowing you to reinforce and reward good driving habits.
EROAD’s in-vehicle Ehubo2 device captures essential information on driver behaviour and then provides real-time coaching feedback to the driver to remedy any issues immediately.
It also transmits and records the data for viewing and further processing on our desktop fleet management and reporting portal – EROAD Depot***.
Real-time feedback and alerts can bring costs down by saving on fuel, brakes, lowering maintenance costs and, ultimately, reducing the risk of accidents.
* EROAD Red Paper – ‘Take a fresh look at your fleet’s fuel usage to deliver big savings and sustainability’
** https://fleetmanagement.unl.edu/general/fuelsavingtips.shtml
***EROAD Depot is a portal that allows you to view and monitor your vehicles in real time from any web- enabled device.
4. EROAD helps you manage compliance with vehicle regulations
A well maintained fleet is a direct reflection of a well-run, safe, compliant and productive business.
The revised Chain of Responsibility (CoR) safety legislation requires everyone involved in your supply chain to now be responsible for the safe operation of your fleet and comply.
EROAD’s award-winning fleet management solution puts safety at the forefront of everything and is an effective tool for managing your CoR obligations. It helps create a ‘safety-first’ culture within your organisation to elevate your safety management practices. It does this by monitoring every aspect of your driver’s, vehicle’s and equipment’s performance so you can address issues quickly and also nurture a strong safety culture.
This includes everything from who’s in the driver’s seat, for how long as well as on-road behaviours such as location, speed, seatbelt use, harsh driving as well capturing important service and maintenance data.
It also allows for two-way messaging so you can stay in touch with your drivers and provides real-time in-cab feedback and coaching to help maintain good driving habits to not only maintain safety, but reduce the overall impact on your vehicles.
Driver accountability is shown to have a very real impact on speed and road safety.
An EROAD study found that vehicles where the driver was logged in had 50% less speed events than vehicles with no identified driver.
Source: EROAD’s ‘The Power of Accountability’ White Paper
Having full visibility of your supply chain (including your sub-contractors) provides you with a deep understanding of your business and also a fully auditable trail of the processes and actions carried out by your supply chain to ensure your compliance with CoR and other legislative requirements.
5. EROAD assists with wheel safety alerts
Wheel loss on a vehicle is a huge risk to your drivers, the public and your business and failure to re-tighten wheel nuts after a short period of in-service running is a major safety issue.
EROAD takes the guesswork out of when you need to re-torque wheels after a tyre change with re-torque alerts which uses distance travelled from our highly accurate in-cab unit, Ehubo2, to ensure your drivers know exactly when the wheel nuts should be re-checked for correct torque.
An automated message is sent straight to the driver in their cab to let them know that a re-torque is needed and prompts them to complete the task as soon as possible.
Your fleet managers and despatchers are also notified on EROAD’s Depot*** software to ensure sure nothing is missed.
