What is Fleet Management?
“Herding cats who can also drive,” is what many fleet managers might say. Fleet management is more than managing people. It’s managing multiple people, out of your sight, travelling at 60+ miles per hour, hauling expensive cargo. Oh, and doing it with hundreds of thousands of other cars right next to them in the course of their trip.
Questions to Consider When Buying Fleet Management Software
If you’re worried that buying fleet management software will be involved and confusing, we advise you to stop, take a deep breath, and repeat after me: “I know more than I think I do.”
We say this because the questions you should ask when buying fleet management software are, actually, pretty similar to what you should ask when buying anything.
Buying fleet management software takes work, but that work follows some familiar patterns. If you know how to shop smart for other products, the following helpful questions will make buying fleet management software easier than you thought.
- Is the software a good fit for my company?
- Is it easy to use?
- Is the customer service/support good?
- Can fleet management software grow with your business?
- What's made in house?
- What's the company's reputation?
- What's your ELD mandate compliance solution?
Free Fleet Management Software
Offering a free something—anything—can change someone's behavior.
I’m not the only one who thinks this way. There was an entire episode of Pinky and the Brain in which Brain builds a new earth (dubbed “Chia-Earth”), then uses the promise of free t-shirts to induce a hesitant humanity to migrate to the new world.
The message?
Free stuff moves worlds.
If your business has a fleet to manage, you still might be hesitant about investing in fleet management software or devoting multiple hours to researching the available options.
Free is a great motivator, given the costs associated with running a fleet. Take fuel alone. AAA expects gasoline prices to rise in spring 2018, and fleet managers will need to stretch their dollar that much further.
If funds are tight, free fleet management software is a great way to save money overall, especially during the test drive phase where you’re learning what works for your business. Even something as small as a diagnostic code alert can save you significant money. If your software is free, that's an amazing ROI.