Go High-Tech With Fleet Management
As cleaning companies strive to stay one step ahead of the competition, Giles Margerison, Director for TomTom Business Solutions UK & Ireland, explained how new technologies can make fleet management operate more efficiently.
While business survival remains the focus for many firms in this languid economic climate, cleaning companies are expanding their service portfolios with industry growth predictions of up to 3% between now and 2015.
Optimism remains cautious, but serious efforts are being made to drive economic growth, with MTW Research recently reporting that numbers of start-up cleaning companies have continued to rise.
Against this backdrop of heightened competition, it can be a difficult task knowing where to focus business attention. Boosting customer service standards is of course one of the key routes to a more profitable business, differentiating firms from their competitors. However, many are struggling to achieve this as they strive to manage costs and tackle burgeoning time and resource pressures, along with increased road traffic congestion.
An increasing number of firms, however, are reaping rich rewards by investing in innovative fleet management technologies. Better insight into the activities of their vehicles – whether they have five or fifty vehicles on the road – are delivering significant boosts to their profits.
Rapid locating
and dispatch The success of vehicle tracking and navigation systems, for example,
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supported with fleet management tools, tailored to meet individual business requirements, are unmistakable. Not only can these systems reduce operating costs and improve efficiencies, they can also increase productivity, improve a firm’s duty of care to its workforce and boost standards of customer service.
Efficiency and productivity can be realised at the touch of a button. TomTom fleet management technology makes vehicles immediately visible to managers, enabling them to locate their drivers and direct them to the next job in seconds. Although traffic cannot be controlled, its effect can certainly be mitigated with live traffic information, allowing companies to plan around delays and dispatch employees to jobs based on quickest arrival times.
In light of research showing that 90% of mobile workers admit to arriving late for customer appointments, this becomes all the more significant, with traffic cited as the major cause by 93% of survey respondents.
Smarter routing means less frustration, while workflow planning can take into account journey times for specific routes or times of the day. Customers are provided with accurate ETAs, and are quickly informed in the case of delays or changes to the job schedule.
Combating fuel costs The Department of Transport has pointed out that driving at 70mph
uses 15% more fuel than at 50mph, while cruising at 80mph can use up to 25% more fuel than at 70mph. Fleet management systems not only allow companies to monitor driver speeds, by offering detailed speed analysis reports, the tools put drivers at the heart of improvement programmes, feeding live performance information back to their navigation devices and enabling them to change their behaviour in real time.
This data is also relayed to managers, helping them to profile and benchmark drivers against performance targets, to dramatically reduced instances of speeding, idling and harsh braking – all of which can have a significant impact upon fuel consumption.
Independent research revealed that savings of £218,000 on fuel costs, and almost 600tonnes of CO2
a
year, are being realised by cleaning and hygiene specialist, Zenith Hygiene Group, through successfully improving driver performance in a programme underpinned by TomTom fleet management.
By saving money on fuel, vehicle maintenance, communications, overtime and administration, reduced overheads means cleaning contractors will be better placed to review their pricing structures, and achieve that crucial competitive advantage.
business.tomtom.com
www.tomorrowscleaning.com
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