Waldo Boshoff
June 15, 2020
The consolidation and integration of your information into an “all-in-one-view” system leads to more meaningful reporting and insights, it ensures that the same data is available across the business, and increases your ROI.
Consolidation of information from 3rd party systems is critical in the enablement of a holistic business view.
- ERP Orders (or Manual Uploads)
- GPS Tracking and Telematics Events from multiple providers
- SHEQ Events
- Video Telematics Events and Video Feeds
- Other Critical Events
In its current form, our Vantage Core Solution optimises routes in vast quantities on a daily basis. Vantage can be set up to integrate with any form of planning data, whether through an API with an existing Order Management System or ERP tool, or through a CSV file with manual planning data uploaded periodically. This data, along with any business rules and parameters, are optimised to provide the planned route as the output.
Focus areas for cost saving are dependent on the business under scrutiny, as well as the quality and volume of fleet data maintained by the business.
Our Vantage Core Solution gives visibility of per kilometre or per minute revenue vs cost. By focusing on metrics such as kilometers driven, time spent at stops, unscheduled stop events, driver overtime and speeding occurrences on route, we have proven cost savings across the board.
Viewmetrics has the ability to develop bespoke features based on your unique requirements, for example:
Your vehicle capacity and attributes are always taken into account to ensure we never plan for overloading capacity or misalignment between site and vehicle attributes.
These custom attributes include; Frozen Goods on Refrigerated Trucks / Trailers, loading versus unloading equipment requirements and many more.
Through detailed trip planning, down to per kilometre and per minute data, Vantage Core is able to view and cost a trip in its entirety. This allows us to allocate time and distance to factors which are inline with the delivery goal, and identify resources which are wasted. In turn, this gives the Vantage Core operator a clear view of wastage and inefficiencies.
Events are created based on these inefficiencies, and each event is handled according to its own SOP, which when followed correctly, introduces change in the business. This is where the true value is realised for our clients.
Through the integration of the Vantage Core planning engine and the execution team / team of controllers, Vantage Core is able to perform previously unheard of feats by dynamically routing vehicles based on operational changes after dispatch. This includes new orders being added, orders being cancelled, manipulation of the order sequence and finding the most optimal fleet to perform a job from a holistic depot view.
A break-even analysis is performed to determine the impact that low volume routes have on the bottom line of your business, enabling you to make the most informed decision.
A common error businesses make is to ignore low volume routes, disregarding their impact on their fleet because the fleet as a whole is doing well, but these routes are doubly damaging to the bottom line if not managed properly as:
(1) they provide minimal return (if any) relative to the cost of operations, and;
(2) reduce a business’ capacity to take on less onerous or more profitable opportunities.
In order to achieve this, you’ll need a solution that provides continuous oversight of events which occur on the road, to allow for quick access to the event overview, and progress of resolution.
- A user to assign the event to themselves
- A user to make comments regarding the progress on escalating or resolving an event
- A full audit trail of event statuses, assignments and activity
- The automatic generation of an event incident report, with critical information to be distributed to stakeholders
- Action change in operation, ultimately enabling better resource utilisation and realising benefit for the bottom-line of the business
a. In-trip Critical Events generated by the Telematics Unit in the vehicle
b. Operational Events (configured in Vantage):
- Overstay at sites
- Late departures
- Late arrivals
- Infeasible trips or stops following delays Fatigued drivers
- Driver changes are required
c. Under-utilised vehicles
d. Under-serviced site (a vehicle to visit a site every X hours / days)
Along with the optimised route generated, it is critical to provide the end user with calculated planned arrival and departure times at all the stops planned for the trip. This results in a standardised, measurable metric for each driver.
The operations team can also utilise this data to incentivise driver performance when exceptional, or discipline drivers when not.
Let’s discuss driver behaviour management in terms of safety and performance. As with delivery performance, once a birds-eye view of the safety metrics are in place, actions can be taken on any unsafe behaviour happening in operations. Without having different standards for different fleets, you can measure speeding, unsafe driving and fatigued driving from a central view and improve those numbers to be inline with the business’ standards.
We also have a number of tech-driven solutions that provide businesses with the means to directly monitor driver behaviour, and engage with their entire fleet as and when needed. Previously, driver behaviour management was only possible with a large complement of support staff but can now be done with a small team overseeing Vantage Voice, an automated voice calling platform that delivers voice messages to any number of drivers across your entire fleet.
We are the only company that offers a driver fatigue solution with a guaranteed reduction of incident reports caused by human error. Read more about our commitment to ensuring driver safety by clicking here.
