8 Ways Fleet Management Software Can Boost Your Productivity
May 22, 2025
May 22, 2025
As they manage commercial fleets, service managers are saddled with important tasks such as ensuring driver safety, staying abreast of auto checks, handling operations, and monitoring driver performance. The difficulty of this role increases significantly as a fleet grows larger.
Without advanced technology, fleets are more prone to scheduling errors, accidents, increased operating costs, driver mishaps, and poor monitoring. Over the years, automation has spread across the transportation industry. There are now many fleet management software solutions that can relieve managers from the burden of these tasks.
Fleet management software primarily collects, stores, processes, monitors, and generates reports on fleet activities throughout the transport cycle. It reports information about the driver, vehicle, fuel, accidents, and road conditions.
On the corporate end, the software handles driver performance, communication and compliance. In some advanced cases, the software integrates with systems such as Driver•i to manage comprehensive rewards systems.
Fleet management platforms normally work with hardware such as cameras that record driver and road activity. Several of these management systems use advanced technology such as artificial intelligence to capture and analyze data in more intuitive ways.
Fleet management software is important for many reasons, especially for its capacity to improve fleet productivity.
Fleet management software may target drivers, vehicles, managers, or all of these elements at once. With the help of automation, fleet managers can easily handle most management tasks without becoming overwhelmed, which enhances the fleet’s overall performance. Here’s how you can improve the productivity of your drivers, vehicles, and managers with fleet management software:
Drivers benefit immensely from the use of management software and enhancements such as Driver•i. Technology promotes positive driving habits, provides real-time driver coaching, and significantly improves drivers’ working conditions.
1. Promoting Positive Driving Habits
With fleet management software, drivers can quickly become aware of their negative driving behaviors and fine-tune their skills. Being aware of these harmful behaviors or habits is the first step to correcting them. For example, the Driver•i platform can identify harmful behaviors that drivers may demonstrate subconsciously, such as distracted driving.
Ordinarily, without fleet management software, distracted driving is difficult to monitor, and may even go unnoticed until it leads to an accident. When drivers have a non-threatening environment where they can learn to perform better, productivity is bound to increase.
2. Creating Coaching Opportunities for Drivers
Some fleet management software promotes positive driving habits through driver coaching. This may happen through feedback and performance reports after the transport cycle. It can also be derived weekly, monthly, or according to the manager's preference.
More advanced systems use artificial intelligence to coach drivers in real time. This approach boosts productivity in two ways:
The Driver•i coaching system alerts drivers of threats while advising them on the best course of action. In some ways, this is like having a personal driving robot in the vehicle throughout the trip. This is valuable not just for drivers, who can work better while becoming aware of risks quickly, but also for managers, who benefit from lower operating and maintenance costs due to fewer accidents and greater productivity.
3. Improving Drivers' Working Conditions
The transportation industry is facing a severe driver shortage, projected to hit 160,000 by 2028. Among the numerous factors contributing to this shortage are a lack of motivation and a lack of a positive work environment. Poor management, communication, and biased criticism without evidence create a hostile work environment for even the best-performing drivers.
Fleet management software creates channels that address these shortfalls. For example, Driver•i gives managers a more efficient and accurate way to monitor and communicate with their drivers. The platform also ensures that managers are armed with enough road and driver performance data to make the best decisions for their fleets. Driver•i has a built-in communication system as well as sensors and cameras for evidence-based reporting. Together, these features enforce a positive environment, driven by evidence and feedback. This, in turn, motivates drivers to be more productive.
Fleet management software is beneficial for fleet vehicles because it provides insights on vehicle health, sends service reminders for maintenance schedules, and prevents accidents that damage vehicles.
4. Vehicle Health and Diagnostic Insights to Streamline Maintenance
When fleet vehicles undergo scheduled maintenance, the costs can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars. Although this is a popular strategy for ensuring all vehicles stay in top condition, it’s not the best option for several reasons. Even with scheduled maintenance, vehicles can hide underlying faults that could cause accidents or lead to increased repair costs. Vehicles can also suddenly develop faults on the road, leaving drivers stranded until they find a technician to fix the problem.
The best fleet management platforms manage vehicle health, using machine learning and artificial intelligence to detect and diagnose faults often missed by humans. This gives drivers an extra layer of assurance that their vehicles are in good condition and raises a flag for preventive maintenance measures.
5. Proactive Maintenance Reminders
Fleet management software can remind drivers and managers of future checks and driver evaluation. Drivers sometimes ignore vehicle faults that seem minor, perhaps because of tight work schedules. Errors with scheduling and reminders can also serve as excuses to miss servicing dates. Unfortunately, these minor faults and errors can lead to accidents. Fleet management software can create and store maintenance schedules and send out reminders. It provides a better way to organize these events so that vehicles remain in optimal condition.
6. Preventing Costly Accidents and Damages
When accidents occur, fleet managers have to tackle issues such as claims, legal problems, and injuries. Another important issue is the cost of a decommissioned vehicle after an accident. This includes the cost of repair and of rerouting all work deliveries intended for that vehicle. Since fleet management software reduces the likelihood of accidents, it reduces the financial burden on managers.
7. Maintaining Accurate Operations Records
Since fleet management platforms store data, including road data and other operational information, managers can track fleet data and keep accurate records. This task would otherwise be difficult because it would require human effort to document such data and generate comprehensive reports. The process would cost more and lead to gaps and inaccuracy in the stored records.
Using fleet management software, managers can optimize efficiency and focus on more important tasks. Meanwhile, the company avoids the stress of hiring and managing more people to perform a single task. Service managers can detect issues in other parts of the fleet and act on them using accurate records. This leads to better productivity for fleet managers, whose work is considerably easier and more convenient.
8. Accurate Driver and Incident Records
Accident data is essential, especially in legal battles. Fleets can benefit from automated management systems that record accident data from different perspectives instead of just traffic cam footage. For example, Driver•i uses forward and side external and internal cameras to collect data. It also has sensors that can detect and report other relevant metrics in an accident. Whereas ordinarily, blame could easily be assigned to a driver without evidence, Driver•i ensures that accusations will be based solely on evidence. This creates trust between drivers and managers because drivers know they will not be accused of causing accidents based on their track records or manager bias.
Although it may seem like an unplanned addition to your budget, the long-term benefits of using fleet management software far outweigh the initial cost. The software covers a wide range of tasks that would ordinarily require many extra additions to your workforce. Tasks such as data collection, sorting, analysis, and monitoring would ordinarily be handled by employees, who must be paid salaries and can make errors. You will spend less to maintain a fleet management software platform than you would to maintain extra headcount.
Other long-term benefits of fleet management software include:
Apart from offering a comprehensive platform for your communication and fleet safety needs, Netradyne offers the chance to boost your fleet performance with immediate results. Driver•i, our smart fleet management software, uses edge computing, machine learning, big data, and artificial intelligence to improve the experience for drivers and managers.
We take a vision-based approach, through quad HD cameras and sensors, to capture data from multiple sources. This organized data can be accessed by key stakeholders for evidence, decision-making, or reporting.
In addition to charting route data, our platform is equipped with a driver coaching system that will intuitively advise your drivers on the best course of action under unfavorable road conditions. Driver•i also implements a real-time performance charting system similar to a leaderboard. Normally, managers would be tasked with identifying higher performing drivers using a series of variables. Since managers do not spend the entire day with drivers, these performance scores can be inaccurate. Through its GreenZone® and DriverStar features, Driver•i allows you to measure driver performance accurately and reward top-performing users without bias.
Managing a fleet of vehicles can become more difficult as operations scale and budget allocations reduce. There is only so much a fleet manager can do with limited information about the fleet. Managers also cannot focus on every driver or vehicle at every point — and hiring more people in management will cost a lot and do little to solve the problem.
Look at it this way: on every trip, data about the vehicle, driver, road, location, traffic, and any other activity needs to be collected. You need to analyze this data because it can expose hidden patterns that you can use to improve fleet performance and profitability. You also need to collect operation data and organize it into an accessible form. You also need to account for driver safety and organize and keep up with vehicle maintenance schedules. Even after you cover the costs of hiring people to run these processes, there’s no guarantee they’ll always yield desirable results.
On the other hand, using fleet management software to streamline this process will cost less and provide more value since artificial intelligence systems can function millions of times faster than humans. In the current transport climate, the smartest move is to optimize for efficiency, safety, and profitability while keeping costs at a minimum. With Driver•i, you can do this and more.
* Individual results and conditions may vary.
** Based on customer data.
† Netradyne must receive written approval to share client data.
Images may be for illustrative purposes only and may not be an exact representation of a product.
