5 Problems Your FMIS Should Eliminate
Is there a mound of papers on your desk that needs your attention? Do you have notes posted around your office reminding you to complete various tasks? Do you owe upper management metrics that you’re still trying to calculate?
What if we told you there is a solution to your problems? Fleet management software. The right solution can solve your pivotal issues to keep your operation running smoothly.
Take a look at five problems fleet maintenance information software (FMIS) can eliminate at your operation.
Disorganized PM Program
One of the keys to keeping your fleet vehicles on the roadways is a successful preventative maintenance program. According to RTA’s founder, Ron Turley, one hour of PM can save 3 to 8 hours of work later. An organized PM program can ensure your technicians are catching minor issues during routine services to make your shop proactive with repairs instead of reactive.
The right fleet management software solution can help you schedule your vehicles for PM and alert you when vehicles are due for services. You can also use reporting tools to determine which vehicles are overdue for services.
Lack of Asset Tracking
Do you struggle to track of how often your vehicles are being used, or which repairs have been performed on which assets? An FMIS can help you resolve this. Through the software you can track when vehicles are used to ensure one is not just sitting on the lot all season. You can also record each asset’s repair history to document what problems it has encountered and when it was last serviced.
Lost Warranty Money
Is your operation throwing away thousands of dollars each year in unclaimed parts warranties because you think it takes too much time to track? What if we told you that 5 minutes of paperwork can yield $110 of warranty claims? That means 45 hours could result in $60,000 in warranty recovery. When using an FMIS, you can invest minimal time to maximize your warranty claims. You can track the warranties in the software to ensure the information is easy to access when vehicles come in for repairs.
Complicated Parts Inventory (or Ordering) Process
Are you spending days – or even weeks – performing parts inventory? Don’t worry, Island Transit did too — until they made the switch to barcoding tools. You can sync barcoding tools to your fleet management software system to easily take inventory. Island Transit trimmed almost two weeks from their inventory process using barcodes and barcode scanners.
An FMIS can also make ordering parts easier. How often do your technicians go to start a job, only to realize the parts they need are not available? That results in wasted time for your techs, and it can cause extended downtime for the vehicle. Instead, you can use your fleet management software solution to alert you when parts are low or not in-stock, and you can even set up automatic parts requisitions to tell you when it’s time to reorder parts when the inventory hits a certain threshold.
Unknown Metrics
When requested by upper management, how quickly can you provide metrics on aspects of your fleet operation, from completed work orders to fuel usage and labor? This can be difficult when trying to find the data in various places scattered around your shop, and then calculating it manually. Fortunately, fleet management software makes this much easier. You can run hundreds of different reports to gather the information you need to run your fleet more efficiently and deliver data quickly.