5 key fleet management KPIs to track

KPIs drive your business towards success, helping you measure your company's performance and progress towards business goals. In this article, we've highlighted the top KPIs every fleet manager should track.

But first, let's look at KPIs and their role in helping your business reach targets.

What are Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)?

KPIs are performance measurements that track progress to help you determine how effectively your business is achieving its goals. They guide your decision-making, helping you make strategic decisions that will help your company succeed.

Every business has specific objectives they want to achieve, but the most common ones are improving efficiency, boosting productivity and reducing costs to increase profitability, and the fleet management KPIs we've identified will help you reach these goals.

Why KPIs are important for fleet management

KPIs are essential to monitoring your fleet management operations and adjusting your processes to help you reach your goals.

They can identify inefficiencies slowing your team down or increasing your costs. When you can pinpoint the actions leading to a loss in productivity or high costs, you can adjust your processes to boost productivity and control expenses.

Monitoring your operations allows you to measure the impact of strategic decisions to see whether they're helping you achieve your goals or not, instead of hoping the decisions you make will take your business in the right direction.

There are several KPIs fleet managers can track, but it's essential to choose a few to help you optimise processes and decision-making. Tracking too many KPIs can be overwhelming, and with so much data to process, you may not know where to start. This is unproductive and could slow down your decision-making process.

With limited time and resources, you want to monitor KPIs that will help you achieve your goals as quickly as possible. To help you get started, we've highlighted the top KPIs every fleet manager should track.

1. Fuel consumption

Tracking fuel consumption is vital if you want to optimise your fuel budget. When you can see how much fuel your team uses, you can find effective ways to reduce fuel costs and increase profitability. Factors like driving style and vehicle performance affect fuel consumption, and if you address these issues, you can reduce fuel consumption. Some ways to improve fuel consumption include training to improve driving style or using route optimisation to find the most cost-effective routes.

2. Total vehicle breakdowns

Tracking your total vehicle breakdowns will help you determine if your maintenance strategy is effective or needs to be reworked to increase the performance or longevity of your vehicles. Vehicle breakdowns can negatively affect productivity, as drivers can't get to their jobs or destinations on time. It can also increase maintenance and repair costs, reducing your company's profitability. By monitoring breakdowns, you can find the root cause of the problem and take action to minimise unexpected vehicle failure.

3. Speeding, acceleration and braking

Speeding, acceleration and braking can affect the safety of your drivers and fuel consumption, so it's crucial to keep an eye on driver behaviour. Tracking driver behaviour remotely can be challenging, but you can successfully monitor it with a Vehicle Tracking System. Vehicle tracking devices monitor your drivers' speed, acceleration and braking, sending the information to a cloud-based system, where you can access the data and generate reports.

4. Route adherence

To keep vehicle mileage low and ensure your fleet drivers reach their destinations on time, you must track route adherence to determine whether your team sticks to designated routes. If you're using a route optimisation tool, it's crucial to monitor route adherence, as you won't be able to measure its effectiveness if your team deviates from their set routes.

5. Schedule adherence

When drivers follow their schedules, they have a better chance of meeting deadlines. However, their productivity will suffer when they fall behind because they've started their shift late or are not following their schedule. Following your team's daily activities can keep your business operations on track, avoiding delays affecting productivity and customer satisfaction.