Regular, preventative maintenance is a cornerstone to protecting your fleet’s bottom line and keeping everything running smoothly and safely. Unfortunately, responding to the urgent needs of your clients and fleet can make it difficult to proactively monitor this critical area.
In an attempt to stay on top of maintenance, fleets often run on a hybrid of digital and analog solutions. They might monitor fleet maintenance on an excel spreadsheet, schedule repairs on multiple whiteboards, and handle inspection reports with clipboards full of carbon copies. They might even have some older software solutions juggling very specific elements of the maintenance process. Sound familiar?
But every time you transfer maintenance information between tools, there’s an opportunity for details to get missed or overlooked. Every bit of data is integral to keeping your fleet running smoothly, and fleet maintenance software brings it all together.
- Inspection reports.
- Mechanic sign-off.
- Regular maintenance schedules.
Each of these components is more impactful (and more efficient) when handled digitally.
Having all of this data together offers you advanced visibility into your fleet and processes, providing critical insights into vehicle and fleet performance, fuel efficiency, and repair trends.
It enables you to make better, timely, and more informed decisions.
Some key benefits of preventative maintenance software
Maintaining a healthy fleet is a challenge if you don’t have a system for monitoring the condition of each vehicle or piece of equipment. This is why fleet maintenance software is so crucial. Let’s examine some areas where it can improve your business.
Equipment costs and maintenance
Your equipment is your business. Without the proper care and maintenance, it costs you in downtime and assets will need to be replaced faster. Fleet maintenance can keep your fleet running more efficiently by:
1. Reducing the cost of running your equipment
Preventative maintenance software helps you discover potential problems before they become more serious, which means you’ll be less likely to suffer large-scale breakdowns that lead to excessive damage to the equipment. And since you’ll be keeping your vehicles in better shape, they’ll operate more efficiently. As a result, you’ll discover that it’s often less expensive to run your equipment in general.
2. Tracking previous maintenance
With so many projects happening at once, it’s easy to lose track of when you last performed maintenance on a specific piece of equipment, especially if you have several machines performing the same task. You might find yourself wondering as you check the schedule, “Didn’t this van just get the brake pads replaced?” Or, “We just had an unscheduled repair on this machine. Did we take care of the regular maintenance at the same time?”
With preventative maintenance software, you can log and track all of your maintenance on the vehicle, making it easier to see exactly what maintenance was performed and when it was done.
3. Finding the most convenient times for maintenance
It’s never convenient to have an asset down for maintenance—but it’s even less convenient to have it down because it keeps needing to be repaired. But with preventative maintenance software, you can schedule maintenance for times when it’s most convenient for your business. Since it’s already scheduled, you’ll be less likely to put it off, and it creates less disruption to your regular operations.
4. Decreasing downtime
Downtime is a curse for any fleet or maintenance manager. Everyone is impacted by equipment going offline, especially when you don’t plan for it. Projects fall behind. Employees end up frustrated. And client relationships can be strained. With fleet maintenance software, you’re better equipped to decide how and when to take things out of commission to keep things running smoothly.
5. Increasing equipment lifespans
Maintenance management software can help you extend the life of your vehicles and other equipment by providing you with service reminders. For example, consider a forklift—a staple piece of equipment in nearly every warehouse. The average forklift has a lifespan of about 10,000 hours. But with the proper care and preventative maintenance, a high-quality forklift can last over 20,000 hours.
6. Helping you identify future priorities
A fleet manager’s work requires a lot of triage. Sometimes you don’t have the budget or time to take care of every vehicle vying for your attention. It’s a matter of prioritizing what’s essential, what’s urgent, and what can wait. Fleet maintenance software empowers you to deal with the stuff that needs immediate attention and craft a prioritized schedule of upcoming needs, allowing you to budget and plan for repairs and parts in the future.
Organizational benefits
On top of keeping your fleet healthy, fleet maintenance software offers some benefits to daily operations. It tears down informational silos between departments, diminishes everyday inefficiencies, and makes things run more smoothly by:
7. Ensuring everyone has the information they need
Performing preventative maintenance on some of your big equipment can impact the entire business. For instance, you might need to delay certain projects or reallocate personnel while maintenance is going on. With preventative maintenance software, it’s easy to alert the right people when maintenance will take place and how long they should expect the equipment to be offline. You can also easily send out notifications when the equipment is online again.
8. Eliminating unnecessary paperwork
Paper used to be integral to capturing and storing information, but it’s had its day. Once you document something on paper, you have to store it and physically retrieve it when needed. It can’t notify you to follow up later, and it’s easy to lose. Going digital empowers you to do more work with less time, space, and effort.
9. Monitoring spare parts inventory
To keep your shop running at peak performance, you probably keep some spare parts on hand. But profitability requires that you have the right number of required parts and know where they are. If you don’t stay on top of your inventory, you end up wasting time and money rushing the delivery of necessary parts or keeping unnecessary inventory in stock. Fleet maintenance software should enable you to easily track what parts you have on hand in the same place you monitor and schedule repairs.
10. Enhancing reporting
Every bit of data fed into your digital system feeds an engine that provides more accurate reports. The longer you work with maintenance software, the more valuable the insights become, allowing you to make quick adjustments and improve productivity and profitability across the board. The only problem is you’ll wish you started sooner.
11. Meeting compliance requirements
DOT and DVIR requirements ensure that the road is safe for your drivers and other motorists. Making sure you stay compliant doesn’t have to be cumbersome. Scheduled maintenance checks can help you avoid the risk and fines imposed on non-compliant vehicles.
12. Boosting accountability
As your fleet grows, it becomes more difficult to manage. The more people use various equipment, the less clarity you have when an injury, accident, or loss occurs. If a piece of equipment turns up broken or missing, fleet maintenance software ensures you know the last place it was used and the last individual who used it.
13. Reducing your carbon footprint
More and more customers are looking for companies that support “green” initiatives. One of the advantages of digitizing your processes is that it leads to less reliance upon paper, and that’s one of the ways fleet managers can play their part in conserving the environment.
A fleet maintenance app will reduce the need for maintaining paper records for all vehicles under your watch apart from a few that are necessary. On top of that, fewer breakdowns in the field means fewer tow trucks and mechanics on the road, which keeps your carbon footprint down.
14. Keeping employees safer
When heavy machinery breaks down unexpectedly, it’s potentially dangerous to your employees (and others). Breakdowns can cause burns, amputations, breaks, and more. Preventative maintenance decreases the odds of malfunction and keeps everyone safe from injuries, keeping everyone happy and protecting you from potentially business-threatening legal action.
15. Protecting insurance costs
When it comes to shipping, delivery, transit, or other vehicle-oriented industries, safety is the name of the game. The owner, managers, and drivers are committed to keeping everyone out of harm’s way and protecting valuable assets. This keeps everyone safer and reduces insurance costs. Some insurance companies may even offer discounts to organizations using this software to limit accidents and injuries.
Discover what fleet maintenance software can do for you
As a fleet maintenance software leader, Whip Around offers a host of solutions to companies seeking ways to control costs and increase the lifespan of their vehicles and equipment. Whip Around’s fleet maintenance solution empowers busy managers with features like:
- Scheduled maintenance reminders to ensure you don’t forget to maintain your vehicles and equipment
- A single convenient location for all of your maintenance records for every asset your company owns
- The ability to send alerts to key staff to ensure that all relevant team members are kept informed of maintenance plans
- Outstanding support from knowledgeable staff who are committed to ensuring that your business is more accountable, compliant, safe, and productive.
Fleet maintenance software can decrease costs (and headaches), while increasing productivity. If you’re interested in what Whip Around can do for your business, book a demo or start a free trial today!
