It’s easy to imagine that mileage capture is just about paying fuel expenses or keeping an eye on contract mileages.
But a key benefit of mileage capture is the really valuable insights it delivers when it’s overlaid with other fleet data streams such as fuel reporting, telematics and vehicle specifications.
Here are five, sometimes unexpected, ways that data insights from TMC have helped customers manage employees’ mobility better.
1 Right people, right places
A client who joined us in 2015 was able to use our data to analyse its employees’ commuting and branch-to-branch mileage for the first time. They identified that some staff were set up at inappropriate locations while others needed to have more than one workplace declared. By reviewing workplace clauses in employees’ contracts, the business eliminated much time and expense previously wasted on avoidable mileage.
2 Achieving an ISO Standard
European kitchen supplier Nobia achieved the ISO 500001 Energy Management standard in 2015. The standard covers all of Nobia’s activities including, of course, fleet and travel. Unfortunately, Nobia’s previous supplier couldn’t provide the data they needed to separate business and private mileage and quantify the energy used. Once onboard with TMC, not only did they cut their road fuel bill by 10% but we delivered the quality of data required by their ISO accreditation.
3 Making night time the right time for lower-priced fuel
Highways England’s distinctive traffic officer vehicles are a familiar site as they maintain 24-hour cover on motorways and A-roads. With a constant eye on costs, supermarket sites close to major routes are a preferred option to expensive motorway fuelling stations, but many are ‘pay-at-pump’ only, especially at night, which precludes some fuel cards. Highways England moved to a Chip and PIN fuel card with built-in TMC data capture. Now drivers can refuel anywhere while our data allows managers to check that everyone is complying with the low-price site policy. As a result, Highways England was soon making fuel savings of £3,000 per month.
4 Getting out of free fuel without getting into hot water
As a benefit, ‘free fuel’ is now taxed so ferociously that almost all recipients would be better off giving it up. Nevertheless, withdrawing private fuel BIK can be a highly emotive subject because drivers want to be sure they won’t lose out. For one TMC client, our data paved the way to a smooth and successful withdrawal of fuel BIK at the start of the 2016/17 tax year. After building up a large amount of trip data before the change, we ran personal illustrations showing each driver how they would be affected. When everyone was happy (90% were immediately better off without the ‘benefit’ and the remainder were given compensation), the client axed free fuel, making a six-figure annual saving
5 Paperwork pulverised
Bad data can be more of a hinderance than no data at all – at least you can’t waste time trying to make sense of data that’s not there. For one of our clients, the cost of poor data was 40 hours per month of the fleet executive’s time, which was spent processing poorly-organised, incomplete fuel and mileage information from their previous fuel card provider into meaningful, HMRC-compliant reporting. Since working with TMC, they now receive finished reports, completely eliminating the unproductive admin time. It’s allowed the client to build up the fleet executive’s role and promote her to a higher grade – definitely a winning proposition!
