The most important tool used by the fleet managers is the Fleet management software. There are many steps which are involved in selecting the fleet management software. Before selecting, we need to assess our requirements.
Assessment of the needs: Assessment of the needs should be done for tracking and better decision making. We have to check out whether new softwares will able to reach all the uses or not. It also should check out completely about the fleet. Maintain a fleet management record for giving information to the programmers how the system is handling the fleet and even the number and type of the fleet which is used for modernizing.
Steps used for selecting the software are:
- Team Formation: Team approach should be used for good and effective results. Select a team which comprises of about 5 to 7 persons. They should be able to evaluate whether it is sufficient to meet the particular needs. The key members of the team must be maintenance supervisor, maintenance technician, parts specialist, finance specialist and the fleet customer. The team should estimate some objectives which are used for achieving time line and to estimate the budget.
- Check out the features: You need to assess all the features,which should match your needs. You need to test drive the fleet management software. As a part of it, we should get full set of documentation and even the sample output of the Fleet Management Software.
- Software capabilities: Different types of software capabilities are available.
- Asset tracking: They contain vehicle and equipment maintaining information. They are: vehicle assignments, component associations, replacement cycle, decrement of the cost of the vehicle.
- Collection of the data regarding the labor: Here various factors which are to be considered are the performance of the labour, real time monitoring, pay roll and barcode support. All these are used for monitoring the work of the employees.
- Outsourced tracking: By using this type of tracking, the information about the price and even the warranty and the history of the repair of the fleets can be determined.
- Parts management: An FMS is used for reducing the inventory investment. Parts management can be easily done by using this software capability.
- Maintenance Scheduling: Meter triggering and standard jobs are being done using this maintenance scheduling.
- Fuel management: This is a capability which describes about the fuel consumption and optimization of the fuel consumption.
- Pool Management: Pool of vehicles can be controlled by using automated techniques.
- Model matching in business: The fleet which performs more functions and tasks are likely to match for any business because they have more capabilities.
- Life cycle cost: Life cycle cost review is to be taken while choosing the fleet system. Build, buy or lease the fleet management software depending on the requirement.
- Multi discipline package: Some organizations should provide packages for multi discipline which turn into large, integrated enterprise applications to handle each and everything.
- Support options: For acquiring the data a software maintenance agreement should be included. They even give us the data about product updates. Initial training costs should also come under the agreement.
- Request for proposals (RFP): This is the last phase where the system performance requirements must be mentioned and the information about the data, and even the expansions needed should be specified in the RFP and then sends it to the vendors. After that review or check out the data for the proposals and select the required software.