2023: 5 Things to Watch in Fleet + Field

Part II

Last week, we began our discussion of the 5 Things to Watch in Fleet + Field, detailing themes and trends in government and regulatory matters and workforce management. In this week’s thrilling conclusion, we again gaze at our Magic 8-Ball to look at emerging themes for 2023, focusing on how to build a culture of safety, the best fleet + field business strategies and ways to personalize technology for your business to improve customer service and success.

3. Fleet + Field Business Strategy

Improving efficiency and creating more effective and streamlined processes are usually at the top of any business’s agenda. In the Fleet + Field world, achieving these priorities is the difference between falling behind or leading the pack.

Thankfully, there’s an app for all of that.

Fleet vehicles aren’t trucks, they’re mobile data stations, packed with innovative technology that helps move them around more quickly, safely, and efficiently. The tech that enables this transformation is telematics. It’s the backbone of successful fleet management, providing fleet managers with the data they need to make informed decisions and increase efficiency.

No matter the size or mission, telematics supports better fleet tracking and management and provides managers a better understanding of how their mobile resources—vehicles, trailers, snowplows, generators, and more—get used every day.

Telematics-driven fleet management software (FMS) is a Swiss army knife that maximizes efficiency and drives savings. It automates reports like timesheets and fuel receipts, requiring less paperwork to be filled out and less to sort through for the back-office staff. Mobile workers spend more time working and less time filling out paperwork. It puts the brakes on theft, strengthens customer service, improves driver experience, maximizes uptime, stops excessive idling and eliminates bad routing. Fleet management tools help beat rising fuel prices, maximize savings through preventative maintenance and boost critical environmental, social and governance (ESG) efforts through emission reductions.

For field services, field service management software is built to drive maximum productivity from technicians, while providing real-time information and reporting to the back office. It creates efficiencies, boosts productivity, and drives revenue. It helps integrate accounting, billing, service, and distribution processes, which dramatically increases overall efficiency and profitability.

From scheduling jobs and dispatching workers to managing the work and optimizing your payment processes, FSM solutions streamline operations, empower your field teams, reduce dependencies, and connect your back office to the field in one powerful platform.

Supply chain issues, rising fuel costs and technician shortages will continue to be big issues in 2023. Field services can get the most out of their organization using tools that simplify and streamline processes and empower techs in the field, making data transparent and readily available, smart scheduling and focus not just on customer service but customer success.

In 2023, leading-edge tech solutions that drive efficiency aren’t a nice-to-have option for fleet + field, they’re mandatory. Look for more fleet service companies – including your competition – to take greater better advantage of innovative technology.

4. Making Safety a Top Priority

2023 will see the importance of driver safety continue to grow.

Driver safety is becoming the paramount goal of fleet services across the nation. Safety plays a key role in every aspect of fleet operations, from driver health to recruiting and retaining skilled drivers, to increasing uptime and reducing liability exposure. Each tie directly to the company’s bottom line.

Improve the safety of your fleet begins by putting in place a system that captures severe and moderate driving activity data. Understanding risky behaviors and how to address them is the key to success in modern fleet management. Making driver safety an organization’s top priority is simply good for business. It can help driver recruitment and retention, protect vehicles and drivers on the road, and help prevent accidents rather than simply reacting to them.

Once again, technology is the key.

Improved fleet safety starts with better data. Telematics provides visibility into key areas of fleet management, allowing businesses to protect people and assets with features like starter disable, remote panic button, and one-touch driver communication. As an added bonus, safety tools also reduce additional costs by increasing accountability through the identification of behaviors that cause high labor costs, such as less efficient scheduling or side stops.

Utilizing smart cameras is crucial. Smart cameras can track and analyze important safety data such as distracted driving, cell phone use, speeding, and alert drivers and fleet managers on behaviors to correct, but also to track good habits as well.

Combined with telematics, smart cameras like Driveri, react to unsafe driving, automatically analyze every minute on the road so you can dedicate your time to coaching your drivers rather than watching hours of video. Powerful Artificial Intelligence, industry-leading computer vision, and edge computing allow the system to rapidly analyze everything on the road and report only the most meaningful information.

Technology and telematics are now the driving forces behind successful fleet management, and smart cams are now an essential tool in any fleet manager’s toolbox because of the speed and precision with which they track and analyze important safety data.

5. Personalizing Fleet + Field

Effective technology that transforms business is not one-size-fits-all. These solutions must be as unique as your business and tailored to fit your needs. In 2023, more fleet and field companies will turn to technology that is personalized and simplified to drive revenue and customer success.

Fleet management systems provide you a mountain of data, and the reports they generate provide a wealth of insights about how to use your vehicles more safely and efficiently, but the sheer volume of data can be overwhelming. Comprehensive, tailored FMS reports will provide precise insights on safety, metrics, fuel usage and your customer service can help create the exact roadmap your business needs to succeed and grow.

Whether you are implementing a safety program, launching a green initiative, or improving your customers’ experience, GPS Insight data provides a clear blueprint to help you achieve your goals. The platform provides more flexible and customizable tools for fleets of all sizes, particularly mid-market and enterprise service organizations across core industries to chart the road ahead.

All these detailed metrics and diagnostic tools allow service organizations to dig deeper and focus not just on customer satisfaction, but to identify what factors shape and define customer success.

It isn’t rocket science: Customer satisfaction is key to a successful business…but we often oversimplify the idea that greater customer satisfaction = greater revenue. The reality is more complex. To truly achieve better business outcomes, service organizations should aim to look beyond immediate customer satisfaction and toward long-term customer success instead.

To evolve to a customer success-based service model, service operations will need to collaborate with their customers to identify a shared, customized set of metrics and KPIs that shape how success is defined. This understanding will reinforce the importance of not only having the tools to empower effective service delivery, but also to track how the operation is performing. Service managers are then able to provide a layer of transparency to their customers, which leads to relationships founded on trust.

GPS insight tools meticulously quantify customer satisfaction and success through comprehensive metrics and clearly defined KPIs. These metrics can provide a clear roadmap of how to increase satisfaction and drive revenue.

Let’s Do This!

The year ahead offers significant challenges and great promise for the fleet and field industry. The right technology can help dramatically improve safety, drive efficiencies and create the most effective and best-tailored business strategies that set your fleet + field operations apart from the competition.

Let’s work together to make 2023 a success!