Why your fleet admin might need a rethink
Administration is rarely front of mind when businesses talk about fleet strategy, yet behind every fleet sits a long list of day-to-day tasks. Invoices need checking, mileage queries answering, holiday cover arranging, fuel cards chasing and information transferring from one system to another.
Individually, these tasks may only take a few minutes. But repeated across hundreds of vehicles and staff, they can end up taking up a lot of time and effort – and when admin slips, it can become expensive.
The answer isn’t to ask fleet teams to work faster – and often this isn’t even feasible. It’s to look at why so much administration is being created in the first place – and where it can be simplified, automated or removed altogether.
Where does admin build up?
It’s often the everyday jobs that end up taking the most time, with invoices being a good example.
Bills from leasing companies and rental companies to fuel card providers and garages will all need to be checked but they could all arrive in different formats. When this is done manually, it can be time-consuming and errors can occur.
Driver queries can be just as demanding. What sounds like a simple question about a mileage claim, fuel card, vehicle order or maintenance booking can involve searching through several emails, spreadsheets and supplier systems before the right answer can be found.
Then there is the time lost to entering the same information more than once. Vehicle and driver data may need to be inputted into different systems and when they aren’t linked, it means more work for the fleet team.
Compliance is another area where manual processes can create more work than necessary. Keeping track of licence checks, servicing, inspections and other deadlines through spreadsheets and calendar reminders puts the burden on people to remember what needs doing.
1. Look at the process
A good place to start is look at where your time is being spent. Which jobs are taking longer than they should? Where do things tend to get held up? What information is being entered more than once? And which questions keep landing back with the fleet team?
Looking at the whole process can quickly show where things have become more complicated than they need to be. A task may involve unnecessary approvals, duplicate information or manual reporting that could be handled much more simply.
From there, fleets can focus on the areas where a change will make the biggest difference.
2. Bring information together
Admin is so much harder when information is across multiple different systems. Driver details might sit in one place, vehicle records in another and cost information somewhere else, leaving fleet teams constantly switching between systems just to find what they need.
Bringing that information together can make day-to-day admin much simpler. A fleet management platform can give teams one place to view driver, vehicle, maintenance, cost and compliance information, cutting down the need to maintain separate documents.
3. Automate the right jobs
Some jobs will always need a person involved but plenty of the routine fleet admin doesn’t.
Technology can be used to schedule licence checks automatically, maintenance reminders can pop up when action is needed and mileage data can go straight into reports. Invoice systems can also spot discrepancies and flag them for review, rather than relying on someone to check every single charge.
That same approach can work across vehicle ordering, fuel and charging reconciliation, and accident reporting.
Technology should remove work and make processes easier, rather than simply giving fleet teams another platform to log into and manage.
4. Make it easier for drivers
A surprising amount of fleet admin can come from answering the same types of driver queries over and over again. Making routine tasks easier for drivers to manage themselves can remove a lot of that back-and-forth.
Driver apps and portals allow employees to submit mileage, report defects, access vehicle information or find guidance without having to email or call the fleet team each time.
Clear processes help too. If everyone knows where to go and what is expected, queries are more likely to be dealt with quickly and consistently.
5. In-house or outsource?
Sometimes, even after processes have been streamlined and automated, there is still simply too much admin for the fleet team to handle.
Outsourcing to a specialist fleet management provider can reduce the burden on internal teams while also giving the business access to specialist fleet expertise, established processes and technology it might otherwise have to invest in itself.
The important thing to remember is outsourcing doesn’t mean losing visibility or control.
Importantly, outsourcing does not have to mean losing visibility or control. Done well, it should give fleet managers a clearer view of what is happening while taking much of the routine workload off their hands.
Use time more effectively
Fleet admin is never going to disappear completely, but it should not take up more time than it needs to.
Freeing up some of that time gives fleet teams more room to focus on bigger priorities, from controlling costs and improving driver safety to electrification and changing regulation.