Opinion: Include Fleet Managers in Software Decisions

By Charles Arsenault

Chief Executive Officer

Arsenault Associates

This Opinion piece appears in the Oct. 27 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

Although 2009 approaches, and technology seems to surround us everywhere we turn, many companies still don’t consider fleet maintenance a first-tier, mission-critical function, putting it instead in the “necessary evil” category. Given that, it’s not surprising that many fleet-owning companies balk at acquiring fleet maintenance management software.

Fleet owners offer many reasons as to why they haven’t acquired a fleet maintenance program, top among them being that there’s no time to implement it and no one to run it after it’s installed. In fact, fleet software providers such as my company have found that their biggest competitor isn’t another vendor — it’s the fleet owner’s decision to “do nothing.”

Even when the decision is made to buy fleet maintenance software, many fleet managers report they had little or no say in selecting their particular fleet software application.

Part of the problem is that fleet maintenance personnel often comprise the least computer-savvy department in the company and are challenged to explain how this or that fleet software could affect the company’s bottom line in a positive way.

These fleet managers also say that while the company’s chosen “fleet maintenance” application may meet the needs of accounting, payroll, purchasing and other departments, it’s often too complicated for them to use and lacks many of the basic maintenance features they need.

Some fleet managers have described the program chosen by those further up the corporate food chain as “an accounting program in fleet maintenance overalls.”

Although industry studies have found that as many as 70% of the nation’s fleets have or use fleet maintenance software, if you look behind the numbers, you’ll find that statistic is somewhat misleading.

For example, in surveys Microsoft’s Excel has been reported and counted as a fleet-maintenance program, but aside from manually recording past repair services, Excel provides no automated asset management, PM scheduling, parts inventory control, utilization data, fuel consumption data or similar functions found in almost any well-developed fleet maintenance software application.

When you consider that a company’s fleet, its maintenance staff and its facilities represent many millions of dollars in capital investment and millions more in annual operational expenses, you have to wonder why the company hasn’t seen the need for software specifically created to manage this large investment and expense.

Based on inquiries we’ve received from maintenance managers over the past 30 years, the following list outlines which software capabilities they want most, beginning with the most-desired features. (It’s interesting to note that the order of these items hasn’t changed significantly over the decades, with the current exception of fuel — no surprise there.)

1. Fleet asset management (control of equipment inventory), with specification and administrative details.

2. Fuel management by unit, category and fleet, with costs and miles per gallon.

3. Automated scheduling of preventive maintenance and other inspections.

4. Fast and easy access to maintenance and repair order history records.

5. Maintenance cost management with costs per mile/per hour, by unit and fleet.

6. Automated parts inventory control with automatic reorder and vendor control.

7. Tire management.

8. Warranty management.

9. Labor productivity.

For a fleet manager, the information in the reports and the simplicity of their production are critical. Already challenged by a lack of resources, fleet managers are concerned with a program’s intuitiveness, the time it takes to deploy before they see results, and the amount of data collection and data entry necessary to keep the system operating.

What all this adds up to is that when a company searches for fleet maintenance software, it is imperative that the fleet manager and his team be part of the evaluation and selection process. Get fleet personnel to document what functionality they need and to state how it will help them and the company.

This process will help with departmental buy-in from the start. Without that buy-in, the program will be underused, or it will fail altogether.

Lastly, but of extreme importance, is the quality of the system’s implementation and the amount of hands-on training end-users receive. This last piece makes all the difference to the overall success of the program and the return on investment to the company.

In today’s economy, it is important to recognize the role of the fleet maintenance department within the company. This recognition can be accomplished only by raising the department’s visibility and accountability. Deploying fleet maintenance management software can make it happen.

Founded in 1979, Arsenault Associates, Burlington, N.J., is a provider of fleet asset maintenance management software and technologies.