Industry Voices: Using Telematics to Help Manage Maintenance

TU-Editor

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25th July 2022

Opinion piece by Trey Hoffman, vice-president of customer experience at Fleetio

Telematics devices provide a mass amount of vehicle data, including information on the health of your assets.

By supplementing telematics data with fleet management software (FMS), fleet managers can receive real-time telematics data in a cloud-based platform to automate maintenance workflows and immediately address vehicle issues as they arise. Housing all fleet data on a comprehensive platform provides managers with maximum visibility into vehicle statuses, maintenance schedules, and inspection results to prevent vehicle downtime and improve fleet efficiency.

Real-Time Data Capturing can Improve Fleet Health

Fleet technology eliminates communication gaps often experienced when relying on paper work orders and spreadsheets and provides you with real-time data regarding your assets. Having real-time insight into the health of your fleet assets, no matter where they are, ensures you’re informed of any issues so you can make necessary maintenance decisions to avoid downtime.

Integrating a telematics system into FMS provides increased visibility into overall operations, allowing you to automate fleet maintenance processes and make data-driven decisions regarding your assets. While telematics tools can provide real-time vehicle information, FMS centralizes all of your fleet data to automate workflows and keep you connected with your team. By pairing the two, fleet managers can accurately monitor driver behavior, fleet maintenance, fault alerts, and overall vehicle health.

Accurate Odometer Readings help Keep Maintenance Proactive

Most fleets base their preventive maintenance (PM) schedules on mileage but manually tracking odometer readings is inefficient and often error-prone. Telematics devices automatically upload odometer readings into FMS, ensuring managers have an organized way to manage fleet maintenance and never fall behind on PM tasks. Fleet managers can set service reminders in FMS based on odometer readings, as well as set up email and/or push notifications so the team knows when it’s time for an asset to be serviced.

Integrating a telematics device into your FMS ensures accurate odometer readings are uploaded each day. You can also sync updates from any of your assets at any time with one click to get instant updates from your telematics system. Instead of manually tracking odometer readings and calculating when fleet maintenance is due, software automates these processes by pulling current telematics data to ensure your fleet maintains a proactive PM schedule.

Diagnostic Trouble Code Alerts Drive Faster Service

Vehicle issues can fester under the hood without you knowing, resulting in more extensive and costly repairs. While a check engine light may go ignored by drivers, fleet managers can gain peace of mind and create maintenance strategies based on information from their telematics tools. By pairing a telematics system with FMS, fleet managers receive instant notification of diagnostic trouble codes (DTCs) across their fleet. DTC alerts from telematics devices can be linked to mobile work orders in FMS, providing maintenance technicians a more complete picture of any issues and leaving a detailed record in the fleet’s service history.

If You can Measure it, You can Manage it

To truly manage maintenance, fleet managers must track and analyze every aspect of their operations. Managing your entire fleet with FMS ensures all of your data is organized into easy-to-read, configurable reports, allowing fleet managers to analyze the exact data they need to make the best decisions for their fleet. By integrating telematics data into FMS, users can view maintenance reports regarding asset utilization, service history, and fault codes, as well as see cost-per-mile calculations based on geolocation data, allowing fleets to monitor expenses and develop strategies to cut costs and improve their bottom line.