Fleet Management Buyer's Guide
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Telematics is now a critical component of modern fleet management. What began as simple vehicle tracking has evolved into a powerful data engine, delivering insights that help you manage risk, improve safety, ensure compliance, and boost operational efficiency. But as technologies have advanced, so have the variety and complexity of telematics tools.
This interactive fleet management buyer’s guide simplifies the process into six steps. Get started below.
What are your company's primary goals?
From our daily conversations with our own customers, who represent more than 5,500 organizations with more than 3.4 million drivers worldwide, we've gathered a sample list of the top goals among fleet managers, along with the tools they use to meet each objective.
Start with the problem. Then seek a solution. What is driving you to seek a fleet management solution? What specific issues are you looking to solve? Once you know the answers to those questions, it will be a lot easier for you to select the right tool for the job.
Solutions to common objectives
Reduce collisions and related auto claims
- Video integrated with vehicle and operator data
- Driver coaching workflow
- Proactive data analysis
- Proactive in-cab alerts
- Driver self-improvement tools such as self-coaching, progress reports, or a dedicated driver app
Reduce worker injuries and workers compensation claims
- Video integrated with vehicle and operator data
- Driver coaching workflow
- Customized safety campaigns
- Positive recognition programs
- Driver self-improvement tools such as self-coaching or as a dedicated driver app
Exonerate your company and drivers from fraudulent claims
- Continually recorded video
- Video footage of collisions and other events
- Vehicle and operator data
Reduce insurance premiums and liability exposure
- Record of long-term safety (5+ years)
- Insurance discount programs for adopting safety technologies
Improve compliance with state and federal regulations
- ELD solution
- CSA data analysis service
- Integrated, electronic tracking solution for HOS, DVIR and driver qualification files
Reduce mystery damage and maintenance costs
- Fleet video systems capable of capturing aggressive driving, curb cutting, hard braking
- Video that allows you to reduce mystery damage by understanding what happened
Lower vehicle fuel costs
- Fuel management data
- GPS fleet tracking system
- Driver coaching workflow
- Driver self-improvement tools such as self-coaching or a dedicated driver app
Elevate customer service through routing efficiency
- GPS fleet tracking system
- Live stream video
- Video on demand
Try it out
Download this worksheet to help identify your company’s primary goals.
Download WorksheetGather your team
You’ll need help along the way. Getting a team together, along with their input and involvement early on in the process, can ease the burden of sourcing and implementing new technologies, head off issues down the road, and increases buy-in for your project (more on boosting buy-in later).
Stakeholders might include folks who handle information technology (IT), legal, procurement, finance, safety, operations, and fleet management. Once you identify these critical people in your organization, invest a little time to walk them through the issues you are working to solve and get their feedback on your project. You might even recruit key players as part of a selection committee to help lighten the load as you vet potential vendors. Be sure to include their feedback and suggestions in your selection process and criteria.
What does success look like?
Visualize what success looks like for each of your goals and objectives. If your goal is to cut collisions, for example, short-term success may be pinpointing the biggest causes of collisions in your fleet, so you know what to go after. Let's say speeding and distracted driving are your biggest culprits. Success then becomes reductions in those two behaviors over time.
For example...
Goal
Reduce collisions
What does success look like?
Short Term
Reduce collisions by 25% in 1 year
Long Term
Reduce collisions by 50% in 5 years
Try it out
Download this worksheet to help identify your company’s primary goals.
Download WorksheetMultiple technologies or single solution?
Should you buy multiple technologies and integrate them to help you achieve your goals? Or should you go with a single vendor to keep things simple? This question pops up each time an organization sources new technology.
In the past, typical fleet management solutions often specialized in one or more processes, offering a fragmented approach to fleet management services. Fleet managers often relied upon multiple vendors to satisfy all their specific needs—whether it be fleet tracking, fleet safety, compliance, or a combination of these tools. Thankfully, best-in-class fleet technology providers have since evolved their offerings to provide for more inclusive all-in-one solutions for fleet management.
Rather than relying upon multiple vendors for your fleet management needs, a comprehensive solution will allow you to pick and choose the products most suited to achieve your goals, while also offering extensive integration capabilities.
How to choose your top candidates
There are hundreds of options in the market for fleet management technologies. Once you start looking, either by asking professional peers for their recommendations or doing some online research, you'll soon be inundated with choice.
Basic questions to ask potential vendors
Why should we do business with you?
What can your solution help me do, and how well can it do that?
How does your technology work?
How can I test the system to see whether it works for my fleet?
How will you support me?
How much will this cost?
Are you worth the money, and can you prove it to me?
Try it out
You’ll want to drill down into these seven areas with specific questions that can get to the heart of what you care most about. To help you with this step, we created a detailed list of questions vendors should be able to answer to your satisfaction.
Download WorksheetRFP Toolkit + Scorecard
Rather than interview each vendor separately, which can be time consuming, make them come to you. By using a request for proposal (RFP), vendors fill out a questionnaire with answers to your questions. It’s an efficient, effective, and widely used vehicle for gathering the information you need to make the right choice.
But you don’t have to spend days creating an RFP. Just download our free RFP Toolkit. It comes with a template, a requirements list (questions vendors must answer), and a scorecard that helps you track answers and submissions.
Download your free RFP Toolkit now.
Download RFP toolkitVet your top contenders
Now you’re down to a few finalists. It’s time to get your hands on the products. Take the time to get a thorough demo of each product. Include some of the people on your selection committee in the demos. After all, you and your team will be spending countless hours with the product, so it’s important to know how it feels, whether it’s intuitive to use, and how easy it is for you to get the video and data you need.
Example questions to ask during a demo
How is the dashboard or user interface organized?
Is it easy to see your key performance indicators (KPIs)?
What are the KPIs and why were they chosen?
Does it prioritize the things you need to see and act on?
What does it look like on a tablet? On a smartphone?
Is there a driver app?
Do you have a way to protect driver privacy?
Try it out
Download a checklist of these questions and more to reference during your vendor demos.
Download WorksheetScorecards and ROI
You’ve gotten answers to your top questions and seen all the demos. Now comes the part where you work with your team to make a choice and build consensus around it.
Two tools will come in handy at this stage: the RFP scorecard and a return on investment (ROI) analysis.
RFP scorecard
If you’ve downloaded the RFP Toolkit, you have a built-in scorecard that automatically tallies the points you award to vendor responses. To further fine-tune your scoring, you can add weights to each question or category of questions. Let’s say you value experience and results most. You can easily assign greater weights to these attributes.
ROI analysis
The second tool that will help you decide is the ROI analysis. This can be an important step in determining which vendor will give you the best bang for your buck. But it can also prove useful if you and your team need to build a business case for your preferred solution and get buy-in across your organization.
ROI Basics
Below is an example of how Lytx calculates ROI, with sample improvement ranges based on the historical performance of our clients. Individual results may vary.
Annual Costs Incurred
- Collision costs
- Fuel expenses
- Maintenance costs
Improvement Ranges
Program Investment
Return on Investment
Try it out
You don’t need an accounting degree to obtain ROI figures. Vendors responding to your RFP should have provided that information when they responded to your request to prove their product is worth it (be sure to question their assumptions and ask how they came up with their numbers).
You can also calculate your own using our online ROI calculator.
Calculate ROIMaking the final call
You’ve done your research, gathered the numbers, and sat through the demos. Chances are, you’re now awash with information, and your head is spinning with so much data. All things being equal, you might want to engage your heart and your gut to help you make the final call.
One last thing–because fleet technologies are rapidly evolving and adding new capabilities, you want a vendor that can provide you with proven technology you can use today, while constantly innovating on your behalf for tomorrow.
Consider…
Whether you feel confident the vendor will work hard and be flexible enough to help you achieve your goals and drive results
How closely aligned are your company’s mission and values and those of the vendors
Whether the vendor has been transparent with you throughout the process
How confident you feel the vendor can scale to meet your needs as your business grows
Whether you and your team feel they can build a good relationship with the vendor
Find more resources
If you’d like to know more about fleet technologies and what they can do for you, we can help. Just reach out to one of our Lytx representatives or visit our blog.
Visit Our Blog You did it!
If you've made it this far, you've conquered the essential steps to making a fleet management purchase. If you weren't able to complete all of the steps, don't worry! You can take away this entire buyer's guide to bring back to your team.
Download the full guide
Download the full Buyer’s Guide to Video Telematics and share with your team.
Download buyer's guideFleet technologies are rapidly evolving and adding new capabilities.
You need a vendor that can provide you with proven technology you can use today, while constantly innovating on your behalf for tomorrow.
Get startedFrequently Asked Questions
You can also find more helpful questions to ask here: 9 Questions to Ask When Looking for a Fleet Management System