Fleet & Risk: Making the Connection
Published on July, 23 by Lesley Lyu
Fleet operation is fraught with risks: accidents and associated legal fees, costly fines, safety concerns for drivers, and so on. These unpredictable incidents are threatening to the health of any fleet operation. For this reason, most Fleet Operation teams are required to work closely with an experienced Risk Management team. When Fleet and Risk connect often and work together, organizations win! When fleet and risk management departments fail to work together and become disconnected, organizations are often left in shambles facing serious financial risks.
However, it is evident that the fleet department and risk management department have different focuses in terms of fleet management, which poses challenges to collectively achieve common goals of the organization. According to a survey by researchers from Fleet Advantage (2018), more than a third of fleet professionals in the survey said the financial team does not understand the benefit of investing in new trucks, and more than thirty-seven percent said the fleet operators are unable to understand financial metrics, goals and performance. When it comes to crash management, fleet departments often prioritize repair speed over costs, while the risk management department gives more consideration on cost reduction and cash flow. Such conflict of interest largely reduces the efficiency of accident repair processes. The lack of communication further exacerbates the disconnections between these two departments.
One of the keys to solve the disconnects in processes and responsibilities across departments, in fact, lies in the visibility of fleet data, which means the mutual sharing of useful information across departments and teams. In the traditional fleet operation model, manually written or typed copies of documents are passed down between fleet and risk management departments. They are not able to gain insights into the bigger picture to learn about fleet data in the organization as a whole, and to understand the metrics and goals of other departments. Such a problem gives rise to the need for an effective tool to aggregate and organize fleet data and make it available 24/7 to authorized users in the organization. In fact, Uptime by SHzoom, does just that!
Uptime is a patented electronic repair management system (ERMS) with standardized crash reports for fleets offered by SHzoom Technologies, Inc. The robust web and mobile system connects fleet and risk with both internal and external key players to optimize the processes of crash management and to ultimately eliminate fleet downtime problems and easily produce customized reports outlining the cost associated with each incident. Its speed and ease of use provides a replacement for the traditional crash management processes.
Uptime helps to solve the disconnection between fleet management and risk management by creating an environment for increasing speed, visibility, accountability, and connectivity between the fleet department and risk management department. Uptime keeps track of every stage of the repair process from the moment the crash happens to the moment the vehicle is repaired and back in the hands of the driver. Such level of transparency allows Risk Managers to adequately track vehicle repair costs and accurately project fiscal year vehicle replacement costs. “Auto accidents are one of our number one risks; across the board when you look at risks in any municipality or any organization that has a fleet.” said Martee Erichson, Risk Manager for the City of Westminster, CO., Customer, and Innovative Partner. With Risk Managers gaining more insight into fleet operations, there is consequently a reduction of timespan of the overall crash management process, which improves the performance of the fleet department.
Uptime also helps accomplish the goals for both fleet and risk departments by speeding up the repair processes and at the same time implementing risk information into the system. For fleet operators, one of the highlights from Uptime is the precise tracking of vehicle status. Even when the vehicle is currently in the body shop under repair, fleet operators are able to know which repair stage is undergoing and when to expect the repair to be complete. For risk managers, Uptime also integrates driver information and safety instructions into shared documents to offer convenience for the overall monitoring of the potential risk and costs of the fleet. With Uptime, fleet management and risk management teams can together bring fleet and safety data under control and turn it into an asset that drives value.
Uptime by SHzoom is now open for public inquiry and demo requests. If you are in charge of public safety vehicles and in need of a solution to better manage your fleet, especially during this on-going pandemic, we invite you to learn about Uptime. Please contact by emailing support@SHzoom.com or visit www.shzoom.com/uptime-contact-1/. We are looking forward to getting in touch with you.
References
“Latest Fleet Advantage Survey Shows Vast Communications Challenges Between A Company’s Fleet Operations and Finance Departments.” Fleet Advantage, www.fleetadvantage.com/press-releases/latest-fleet-advantage-survey-shows-vast-communications-challenges-between-a-companys-fleet-operations-and-finance-departments.