We interview John Norris, President and CEO of fleet relocation and logistics company AmeriFleet, to get his thoughts on industry trends and how AmeriFleet is poised to capitalize on those developments.
By Janice Sutton
Q: John, what trends are you seeing in the industry today and how is AmeriFleet responding to them?
A. I think there are a couple of things we need to be cognizant of – it’s becoming more and more true that the expectations in the way we do commerce as consumers is bleeding more and more into the business-to-business environment. I think we can thank Amazon for that, right? Amazon says: place orders quickly, status in real-time virtually, and have everything happen as you expect it.
And that is becoming the expectation in the business-to-business world. Speed. Better, faster, more cost effective. That is the focus we have from a “50 thousand foot” strategic view. How that translates to us in terms of what we are doing today is to recognize that to provide real-time status updates, we need to first capture real-time status. In an environment such as ours, where we have hundreds of people moving around the country every day of the week, the only way to do that effectively is with the right technology tools.
So, we have embarked on a strategic program of overall field automation to make it easier for our driver, for our dispatchers, and everybody that works in the field environment, to execute the work to a quality standard, to execute it efficiently, effectively and to ensure they have effective support throughout. So, there is an internal aspect to field automation in terms of making the drivers’ and the dispatchers’ jobs easier. And that translates into better service for our customers.
We just launched the first phase of that program, which is an electronic condition report. So, no more paper and, by the way, no more lengthy waits to find out the condition of a vehicle. As soon as the smart device, which this runs on, is signed by the client driver, the condition information automatically gets uploaded into the system and is available immediately, along with a set of seven photos of the vehicle.
So, why is that important? Again, better, faster, more cost effective. Fleets are turning vehicles faster and faster today. They clearly recognize that having the vehicle in their driver’s hands being utilized as an asset is where the biggest bang for the buck is. And that’s placed a lot of pressure on the system to capture information quicker about the condition of the vehicle so they can decide on repairs; they can decide on whether it goes to auction, or whether it gets re-deployed. And they can do it faster than they ever have before. This affords them that capability.
Beyond that, it is much easier for our drivers. Now they don’t have to worry about paper. They don’t have to manage paper and they don’t have to worry about getting to a fax machine or a place to email a condition report – it happens automatically on their device. And that is just step one of an entire platform that will drive more and more real-time status information, vehicle location information, and a host of other key metrics and indicators that the fleet marketplace is looking for.
Q. What are some of the issues that your fleet clients are concerned about?
A. Safety seems to be making a resurgence again due to some recent events; some large companies with significant judgements — we had the situation with a TV personality getting injured in a crash. Not that fleets haven’t always been concerned about safety, but it has become more of a brand concern now and not just a tactical concern; it is getting to the C-level suite these days.
So, safety is clearly one of the things that fleets are wrestling with improving, especially in light of the fact that you have more and more mobility. You have more and more applications. You have smart, connected vehicles. All of these things are potential driver distraction issues. So, balancing the efficiency of that technology with the safety of that technology is one of the things that fleets are really going to work on.
Next, keeping the overall cost to manage a fleet down. It has always been there, and it is more significant now. People are starting to look, fortunately I think, at more than just the direct cost, but what is the total cost to manage a fleet?
And the area of logistics has lagged behind other fleet expense categories in terms of the tools and information used to make decisions on things like maintenance and fuel usage or type of vehicle to purchase, residual values, all of those categories. There is a lot of sophistication in those categories. There isn’t as much sophistication in the logistics space, this is an opportunity to bring something to the party. So safety and cost are certainly two things that fleets are concerned about.
The post Q&A with AmeriFleet’s John Norris: appeared first on Fleet Management Weekly.
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