Does lowering your fuel costs sound too good to be true?
Depending on your business segment and size, fuel expenditure can account for up to 60% of your company’s operating costs. And, although the remaining operating costs tend to remain relatively stable over the short term, the price of fuel changes daily.
Finding ways to manage this operational cost can significantly impact a company’s bottom line. This includes monitoring and understanding all levels of fuel activity such as consumption, shrinkage and waste, cost reporting, odometer readings, and authorization for fuel dispensing.
Taking control of your fuelling operations can save up to 15% in fuel consumption! How? By investing in automation and effective fuel management.
Key Benefits of an Automated Fuel Management System
Fuel management is one of the most important things to consider when operating a fleet. If you own a fleet, you will want to make sure that the fuel is correctly managed from the moment it is purchased to after its long-haul journey has been completed.
An automated fuel management system gives fleet organizations a much higher level of accountability and can reduce ‘shrinkage’, or wasted fuel, by 10-20%. It also provides fleet managers with access to more accurate data, thus improving efficiency.
With the kind of data made available through an effective fleet fuel management system, the benefits are almost limitless.
Greater Efficiency
All fuel management data can be integrated with a fleet management system and kept in a single database eliminating the need for fleets to rely on manual or duplicate entry into multiple databases.
Cost Savings
Fuel management systems give managers the technology to set fuel dispensing limits for drivers, vehicles, or timeframes. Specific fuel types can also be assigned so that the wrong type of fuel is not dispensed into a vehicle reducing unforeseen maintenance expenses.
Reduce Fraud and Abuse
Fuel theft and abuse isn’t uncommon in the fleet industry. Authorization mechanism, such as requiring operator identification, or limiting the amount of fuel dispensed in a set time frame, can help reduce fraud or waste from unauthorized use.
Improved Data Accuracy
Simply reporting and storing data does not improve operational efficiency, especially if the data is done manually instead of being captured in real-time and integrated back into your business practices. Having accurate data and effective analysis from your fleet and mobile workforce are crucial to improving your business operations and insights. With all fuel and meter information input through an automated, real-time validation process, there is no risk of inaccurate data or human error.
Preventive Maintenance Improvements
Keeping up with maintenance can extend the life cycle of fleet assets and free up budget dollars to be used as managers see fit. Scheduling preventive maintenance based on time alone can be a simple approach, but it may not be the most cost-effective. An automated fuel solution can be instrumental in developing preventive maintenance schedules that are based on time, fuel consumption and mileage. Whichever comes first.
Let’s learn about the different solution levels available today:
Level 1
Basic hardware automatically registers supplies and nothing more. This ensures savings of up to 2% in fuel and is easy to implement, but there’s human interference to consider. Thus, errors and inventory deviations can occur, compromising up to 10% of the total volume moved, creating significant flaws in inventory control and data allocation in reports.
Level 2
At this solution level, a fleet begins to integrate several automation attributes. With this type of system, control over losses is more effective. In addition to this gain in efficiency, the difficulty and cost of implementing this level of management begins to have a positive impact on business operations, and maintenance is reduced.
Level 3
At this stage, the installation is of medium complexity, and online reports and integration with ERP systems are available. Additional attributes include user authorization (vehicle), which can also be integrated into the driver’s operations, equipment authorization and fuel management are already present. With deviations of under 2% and tighter control, the financial advantage rises to up to 8%.
Level 4
This level can restrict losses to less than 1% and generate savings of up to 10%. This fully automated system provides proactive alerts on critical issues, securely captures all equipment data and vehicle readings in real-time, analyzes your business performance, and all data is stored over the cloud. This enables management from anywhere, at any time, all through one point of interaction.
With the fleet management market size set to reach $45 billion by 2027, remaining competitive is key.
To learn more about how to implement an automated fuel management system suited to your business.
