Article provided by Netstar
There can be no denying that managing an SME, which is challenging at the best of times, has become more gruelling during the year of COVID-19. While we wait for global and local economies to recover, now is the time to help identify and solve the issues you as an SME fleet owner or manager may be facing. Below are some examples of common SME productivity challenges:
Communication
Often, SME productivity requires a lot of manual input, especially for business owners of fleets who have to stay in constant contact with their drivers, ensuring deliveries are done safely and on time.
While team communication must take place, if done manually, especially in a context where normal means of comms are difficult to establish, (think SMS, radio, phone and others) communication can take up a healthy chunk of time every single work day, which equates to a lot of time lost on other areas of the business.
Monitoring
Communication and monitoring go hand in hand when it comes to fleet tracking and management. You need to ensure that what is being communicated is verifiable for insurance, auditing and other requirements, and just like staying in touch with drivers, this can take up a lot of time.
Manually monitoring driver behaviour and the overall safety of a fleet is difficult at the best of times, and is, on average, time-consuming. The issue is often further compounded by the fact that manual monitoring can only go so far; meaning that if you’re not able to monitor certain aspects of your business regularly (like fuel consumption) you’ll only realise something is wrong after a length of time, usually when you start checking budgets vs actual spend.
Paperwork and reporting
The above two challenges require proper reporting and paperwork to ensure a manager or owner can gain necessary insights in order to make informed decisions regarding their business. If done manually, this can take an inordinate amount of time to collate and by the time the necessary information is at hand, it may be too late to implement any kind of meaningful change.
The solution
There are various solutions that could help solve all three of the main challenges listed above — digital, real-time and fleet telematics approaches that can make communication, tracking, monitoring of drivers, cargo and vehicles, as well as reporting easy, feasible and much more time efficient.
While times are challenging, digitising your business can be applied in a bespoke manner to suit your specific operational needs. For example, if you have a handle on communication and monitoring, but are tired of trying to deal with the paperwork, then you can get a digital solution to help with that specifically and exclude all the rest.