The 3G Shutdown Is Coming – Is Your Fleet Prepared or in the Dark?
If there’s one thing that businesses can take from the 2022 Civil Construction Industry Survey, it’s the increased demand from customers to use certain technology to bid for work. From GPS to Building Information Modelling (BIM), the uptake of new technologies is only going to increase, as businesses, constrained by major challenges, look for possible ways to gain more productivity.
While almost a quarter (23 percent) of civil contractors cited technology as a key part of their bidding for work process, the growing demand for large-scale projects will continue to urge businesses to better explore technologies’ full capacity.
Most businesses use telematics software to manage their assets, and to know where their employees are at all times. However, there are several key areas where technology could be maximised, since many elements of working in fleets require management, reporting, and organisation.
Improved cost management
As costs continue to rise with regards to running a business – equipment costs are rising, fuel is costly, inflation over 7 percent – cost-saving wherever possible is a top priority. Future prices of diesel, road user charges or tyres, can be factored into a calculation demonstrating how costs may change over the course of a project. Your customers can feel more comfortable in knowing that you have the capacity to closely monitor costs, better understand costs and budgets, and better stay within agreed-upon limits.
With Waka Kotahi’s plans to reshape many of the country’s streets, potentially making them even harder to navigate, fleet management software will enable trucks and fleet vehicles to avoid congested areas as well as areas where large construction projects are underway, ultimately saving money in labour, time, and fuel usage.
Becoming tick-a-box tenders
Tenders often come with a wish list. In response, telematics is a good way for businesses to ensure that most points on that list are ticked. Proving more value to a customer increases your chances of winning more bids. Further uses or under-utilised aspects of telematics software can include insurance risk management, improved health and safety compliance, and an enhanced chain of responsibility.
These days, more and more businesses are utilising telematics data to evaluate and improve driving behaviour and fleet safety. Using telematics properly can help quell fears surrounding risk-factors attached to tenders, as it can play a key role in protecting employers, employees, vehicles, assets and job sites alike. By monitoring every aspect of performance, keeping tabs on risk factors, telematics software allows businesses to maintain operational visibility and streamline processes. Moreover, telematics systems makes comparing your safety and efficiency scorecard against competitors easy, highlighting how a business is highly capable of complying with health and safety obligations.
When it comes to the chain of responsibility, fleet technologies enable a much bigger picture thanks to the full set of data available – including important service and maintenance data and behaviour-based telematics insights. It not only reduces operational risk, but also goes a long way towards spreading the responsibility for both preventing accidents and dealing with them through the chain of command. Whether it’s on-road behaviour or lack of training, businesses can ensure that the blame for an ensuing incident will at least partially fall on those who’s responsibility it was to ensure improvements, training or maintenance were performed.
There’s more to telematics
Although the use of telematics software has grown in popularity, most businesses adopting telematics only use it passively – which means there are many uses to the system beyond the features that address the initial problem that drove its purchase. This is because most companies only really examine their telematics data when an exception arises, such as an incident or a traffic violation. But if there are no incidents, drivers are largely on time, fuel usage is not going through the roof and vehicles are running in good condition, it can be rare for managers to pay close attention to the telematics data. However, this underutilisation means businesses could be losing competitive advantage.
The best way to use telematics is to use it in a pro-active way, where data is analysed on a regular basis and iterative changes or improvements to drivers, vehicles, routes and systems are made. Making better use of existing technologies, telematics software included, can contribute to a more efficient, higher performing business, with better bid opportunities.