5 Best Fleet Management Tools for Seamless Business Operations

There’s much more to it than only tracking business drivers and vehicles. Fleet management tools are responsible for making the process more cost-effective, efficient, and easier. From real-time location to document storage to scheduled maintenance and more.

Fleet management tools help you understand where your employees and vehicles are at all times. Also, they offer you a maintenance schedule so that you can stay compliant with it. A business needs to know where their drivers and vehicles are because, in case of an accident, they can react immediately.

After all, only 23% of fleets claimed that they use big data analytics for making strategic decisions.

Fleet management tools reduce time consumption and allow you to react immediately, so in this article, we will dive deeper into learning more about the top tools you can use for your business.

Top 5 fleet management tools you should use in 2023

1. Fleetio

Fleetio is a simple alternative to spreadsheets and outdated software that automates fleet operations tasks and keeps all vehicles and equipment running smoothly. Fleet maintenance doesn’t need to be complicated, but should be an automated process.

The Fleetio dashboard allows you to strengthen communication levels between fleet managers, owners, drivers, vendors, technicians, and more. Moreover, you can handle fleet-related tasks and critical data from anywhere only by using the smartphone app that is designed for busy and distributed fleets.

Furthermore, the greatest part is that you can automate the maintenance process from operational workflows to data integrations without the need for manual data entry. The best feature of Fleetio is its Maintenance Work Order template. Building enough maintenance data through a central location gives you insights regarding your fleet’s health and return on investment. It’s free to download and is easily uploaded to the fleet management software.

You’re maybe asking why you would use a maintenance work order. Well, the entire reason behind it is that it ensures everyone is on the same page regarding repairs and maintenance. Also, which assets are prior to service. Whenever organized properly, a work order can be used to determine all previous maintenance performed for identifying much larger problems and trends.

Fleetio’s work order template is used through Google Sheets, which is a free alternative compared to Microsoft Excel. You can create your own editable template only by making a copy after you open the template’s link.

Pricing plans with Fleetio begin at $3 per month and if you want to try the platform out, you can by booking a demo. Each paid plan you choose to subscribe to has its own set of features that are listed on the website.

2. Detrack

Detrack is a fleet management software that allows businesses to keep track of real-time deliveries. Like most other fleet management software, it offers a wide range of features that include customer alerts, GPS tracking, and automatic route optimization. The best part about Detrack is that it also offers a mobile app for both Android and iOS.

Moreover, Detrack is best for 3PL couriers, e-commerce operators, pharmaceuticals, food & beverage delivery, and more. Key features with Detrack include:

• Dispatch management
• Routing
• GPS
• Inventory management
• Fuel management

Pricing with Detrack starts at $26 per month and offers a free trial along with a free version. Additionally, Detrack has a special offer that includes offering a first driver a free forever plan and after, $24 per driver per month, or $240 per driver per year.

3. Connecteam

Connecteam offers powerful software that does much more than only track your vehicles. Additionally, it helps coordinate with your employees and run payroll, ensuring your workforce has reduced risk exposure.

Furthermore, it automates all of the important functions of your business. The software offers a mobile application for clocking shifts in and out. A powerful feature called geofencing ensures that employees are clocking in their shifts.

The timesheet data from Connecteam is easily connected to your payroll software, which you can use for paying employees on time for all their work.

Connecteam is highly concerned about increasing operational efficiency at the workplace and allows you to display the employee's location on your map, reassigning all of the closest workers to the nearest job site.

In other words, Connecteam is simplifying the procedure for assigning shifts and routes. Additionally, you can add the proper guidelines for a job, set up notification reminders for important tasks, and much more.

Key features with Connecteam include:

• One-on-one messaging and a group chat
• Shift and task reminder
• Assigning shifts and routes to employees
• Seeing all employees on the map
• GPS-based timesheet tracking and more.

The pricing plan with Connecteam starts out free and the paid plan is $29 per month for the first 30 users.

4. Nexar Fleets

Nexar Fleets offers powerful software that is powered by the Nexar One. Its dashboard is user-friendly and allows you to optimize and monitor your vehicles all in one. In short, the dashboard allows you to monitor all of your assets and vehicles while tracking where each of them has been.

In case there are any issues, you can download and share the footage of the scenario with your insurer. Key features with Nexar Fleets include:

• Smart alters
• Live streams
• 24/7 GPS tracking
• AI incident detection

Pricing with Nexar Fleets starts at $14.99 per month per user with a 30-day money-back guarantee. However, keep in mind that Nexar Fleets has no free plan available.

5. Route4Me

Route4Me is a cloud-based fleet management solution that is created for both small and large businesses. Key features include routing guides and planning. In short, it allows users to plan a route and upload customer addresses. Additionally, users can track the driver’s real-time road progress and manually move a customer from one route to an alternative one.

Moreover, users can plan their routes daily or monthly with on-demand schedules. All routes can either be round trips with a time restriction designed for ending anywhere. Additionally, Route4Me has a command center, which is responsible for allowing you to see an entire overview of the company. All drivers and vehicles are assigned alternative routes where drivers can take notes.

Route4Me has a free trial for all customers, but basic pricing begins at $9.99 per month and goes all the way up to $149 monthly.

How fleet management tools benefit the supply chain, logistics and procurement companies

Fleet management is highly important for the operational efficiency of any company. For a company to be successful it needs to effectively manage its logistics and fleet for the process to run smoothly and how it’s required. This reduces business risk and here’s how fleet management tools have helped companies over the years:

• Cost reduction: Fleet management tools have managed to save companies thousands of dollars monthly depending on how big the fleet is. If you want to know how much money you saved, see how big your fleet is and multiply it by 12 months. Especially if you are on a limited budget, this is super helpful in the long term.
• Improves customer service: Fleet management tools provide real-time tracking and closely monitor vehicles so they ensure the on-time delivery of goods and services to customers. Improved customer satisfaction also contributes to customer loyalty and reduces the cost of acquisition (CPA).
• Improves driver safety: Improves the driver’s safety by tracking the real-time location of vehicles and allows them to avoid accidents as much as possible while on the road.
• Minimizes inventory investment: Integrates multiple platforms and minimizes inventory investment. When you integrate all systems into one platform, it’ll be much easier for you to optimize your inventory investment by having a central view across all systems and assisting your decision-making process.
• Optimizes the supply chain: Supply chains are all about creating a product or service. This includes warehousing, procurement, material handling and more. The main goal of the supply chain is to reduce costs and improve the customer satisfaction level by reducing lead times and increasing the product’s availability.

The reason you should be using fleet management tools

Fleet management tools have come a long way and have brought major innovations to the world. They are allowing us to stay more connected than ever and to recommend drivers alternative routes, so they can save time when on the road and reduce their risk exposure.

If businesses want to stay up to date with their fleet management technology, they should use the right tools for it. After all, fleet management tools have reduced risks on the road, and operational costs and have highly optimized supply chain functionality.