Many years ago, in a not-so-distant province on the coast of South Africa there was a fleet manager named Matthew. Matthew worked at a large industrial company and was responsible to manage a fleet of over 100 vehicles. Despite having a tracking system in the vehicles, Matthew battled with high fleet costs which upset his senior management team. The senior management team demanded reductions in the operational cost of the fleet of vehicles. Month after month he would spend many hours scanning the copious number of reports sent to him.

From time-to-time differences in interpretation may arise between the Insurer and the customer on the cover provided by the products sold to the client, and a simplified process is required to clarify and rule on such uncertainties.

For this purpose, the Financial Services Conduct Authority (FSCA)established the Ombudsman for Short Term insurance, or the OSTI, to act as an independent evaluator of claims that are repudiated or rejected by insurers.

Driving a roadworthy car is a legal requirement in South Africa however 80% of cars surveyed are deemed unroadworthy and unfit to operate according to the National Road Traffic Act, 1996 [No. 93 of 1996].

Why policy terms and conditions can “bite you”

Your short-term insurance contract can often seem confusing and overwhelming. One of the most important decisions you will make as a short-term insurance client will be to spend some time (with the help of your broker, if necessary) going through all the terms and conditions of your policies to make sure you understand the “ins and outs” of your cover. You will then know exactly what you are and are not covered for and there is little to no chance of any “surprises” at claims stage.

Below, we will go through some of the policy terms and conditions that we at Eqstra Financial Services feel are very important for you to familiarise yourself with.

Excess:
An excess is the amount you are liable for prior to the settlement of a claim under an insurance policy, “it is the agreed amount of money you pay the insurer as a contribution towards repairs or replacement” (Schyf, n.d.).

Tracking the productivity of your fleet is a challenge that many businesses face. However, it is an essential part of your operations, and by understanding exactly how your fleet is performing, you will be able to utilise your assets effectively, improve fleet efficiencies, boost vehicle uptime and maximise your overall productivity.

Here at EQSTRA, we understand how important it is to be able to track the productivity of your fleet. For over three decades, we have been working in the fleet management space across southern Africa, helping businesses to optimise their fleets and enjoy cost-saving benefits through our innovative solutions.

Our robust customer portal contains a range of dashboards that have been specifically designed to help you manage and track your entire fleet’s performance through one simple user area.

What is fleet productivity?
Before looking at how our unique platform can help your business, it is important to understand what is meant by fleet productivity. The process is about understanding how your vehicles are being utilised, how your assignments are being completed and trying to ensure that you are able to maximise the efficiency of your staff.

Fleet productivity is about creating a measure of output, letting you identify successful areas and areas in need of improvement. It is an effective way to boost fleet efficiencies and help provide you with clear cost-saving measures.

How the EQSTRA Productivity Dashboard can help
Our unique fleet management software has been developed to ensure you have a complete, in-depth view of the performance of your fleet in one easy-to-use solution. To help you achieve the maximum efficiency from your fleet, we have split the dashboard into a number of key areas:

Fleet Statistics
This section has been designed to give you a complete overview of your fleet’s performance by product contract. In this area, you can filter via a number of key criteria such as cost centre, cost component, product, vehicle registration or driver. We have also enabled it so you can compare our performance on each product against other EQSTRA customers in the same industry as you.

Fuel Usage Dashboard
This is a particularly useful area that gives you the opportunity to track, compare and manage your fleet’s fuel usage. You will be able to see an in-depth analysis of things such as estimated rebate lost due to non-Caltex fill-ups, possible fuel siphoning, fuel card usage on another vehicle, higher than normal consumption and abnormal fuel transactions.

These are very common areas for inefficiency and can significantly reduce the overall productivity of your fleet. Our system is able to show the location of each vehicle, helping to highlight things such as transactions when the vehicle was not at the filling station and occasions when the fuel card was used to fill up another vehicle. We can also help you to quickly identify transactions where the capacity of fuel purchases is higher than the capacity of the tank, below 15 litres, or where the vehicle has been filled up more than once in a day.

To help maximise your fleet efficiencies, we can also help you compare your fuel usage against vehicle model averages. This helps you to identify if the vehicle is in need of repair, or the driver needs to be more fuel-efficient in their driving.

Vehicle Telematics – Tracking, monitoring and Recovery
This section in the dashboard helps to provide you with a clear view of the movement of your fleet as well as a view of the driving styles / and driving behaviour of each driver, you can filter for specific criteria, such as:
• First trip of the day, including start time by vehicle or driver name
• Last trip of the day and finish time by vehicle or driver name
• All trips that are finishing at the vehicle home or site location
• Distance (km) travelled by the time (hour) of day
• Distance (km) travelled by the day of week
• Distance travelled (km) outside the home province
• Driving behaviour %, speeding %, idling %, harsh braking % and max km/h. This information is recorded by vehicle, cost centre, vehicle model and day of week

Variance Reporting
This section of the dashboard details crucial operational aspects of your fleet. You may view and amend vehicles per cost centre, see which drivers are allocated to the vehicles; have a view of your fleet mix - make and model; manage contract parameters with the actual vehicle utilisation, and have sight of vehicles contracts that have past their termination date..

Route Planning, Business Trips and Delivery Tracking
At EQSTRA, we believe effective fleet management is measured based on cost per minute spent with a customer, cost per item delivered, or cost per site visit. The data in our dashboard will help you establish best routes thus maximise the overall efficiency of your team.

Our interactive dashboard will help you compare the routes drivers took against the planned versions, allow you to see the total number of business sites visited or deliveries completed, the overall private distance that has been driven and possible ghost calls completed.

Dashboards in PDF
To ensure that your entire team understands their performance and to help you showcase your performance to key stakeholders, the EQSTRA dashboard can also produce in-depth PDF reports. These reports may be automatically distributed to your drivers on a weekly basis, highlighting their behaviour and vehicle usage.

You will easily be able to identify low-performing drivers, timeously, so that you may address any performance or behavioural issues, immediately...

How we can help your business
By utilising our in-depth solutions, we can help you to transform your business through effective fleet management. Our mission is to help you to take the time-consuming processes away from you, ensuring you can enjoy in-depth analytics and focus your full attention on your business.

We work with over 1,200 customers across a vast array of businesses, and we pride ourselves on providing unrivalled customer service, combined with a proven, singular access fleet management solution.

So if you are looking to increase productivity, boost cost savings and enjoy a more efficient fleet, get in touch with our team today to find out more.