Adopting Digitization to Address Modern Fleet Management Challenges

By Suvajit Karmakar, CEO, ALD Automotive

Suvajit Karmakar, CEO, ALD Automotive

Use of technology for fleet management in India is a very new thing as most of the companies still maintain excel sheets and basic MS Office tools to run their business. But keeping in mind the changing market trends, companies are gradually adopting technology and agile approaches and also investing more on these. For the Indian market, the biggest challenge today is that the market is not really mature but the customers have high expectations. Due to globalization, Indian customers are thinking in terms of European and American market, while our industry is not equipped enough to cater to that. Lack of back end infrastructure and national level service providers for single tie up forms the next big challenge. Thus, our major focus should be to concentrate on the convenience of the customers and technology, and digitization is the key to it.

Technology be the Driving Factor

The penetration of handheld devices in the matured markets is driving customers towards seeking more convenience.

Rather than calling and following up on updates, they would prefer getting information on the click of a button. Technology makes the entire system much simple and adds value to organizations in this competitive market. Integration of things through digital technology along with advanced data management gives better feedback to fleet management companies in terms of cost management and service level delivery as they can come up with more accurate solutions to the challenges. Although the salary sacrifice car segment is the largest segment today however the e-commerce segment is growing very fast and here the companies mostly rely on fleet management solution providers as the entire business is based on transport, shipping and delivery and the coordination is mainly carried out via phone or Internet.

"For a fleet management solution provider, it is very important to focus both on their point of view as well as the customer’s point of view"

Digital Platforms to the Rescue

For a fleet management solution provider, it is very important to focus both on their point of view as well as the customer’s point of view. As against America or Europe, the Indian customers expect direct delivery of service, while a mature market would ideally look for intermediary breach managers to help them manage the fleet and risks. Thus, it is very important for a fleet management solution provider to understand their customers and then build their applications accordingly and also integrate their service providers over a period of time through some level of technology which will actually help them in improving the service levels.

With more than 2000 service providers in India, we, ALD Automotive, have built digital platforms where the customers can book and track their services. We also have the capability to track the kilometers and fuel consumption in terms of official usage, helping our customers improve their productivity and cost management. The digital platform adopts the customer’s cars policy in our system and whatever technologies we are using is mostly in-house, developed by a large IT back office unit. Our telematics data helps to modify contract with the customers and track the usage and performance of vehicles.

ALD Automotive India, established in 2005 offers fleet management and long-term vehicle leasing solutions to companies in 41 countries.