TecAlliance explains how its integrated solution for service, maintenance, and repair can enable businesses to fulfil their responsibilities.
Fleet vehicles must be serviced and maintained correctly to minimise any unprofitable downtime. However, by placing the running costs in a framework that delivers strict financial disciplines, fleet managers will find they benefit both financially and logistically. Fleet Manager from TecAlliance is an integrated forecasting and job management solution designed to optimise the costs and processes associated with multi-vehicle operations.
The forecast module is designed to calculate the anticipated maintenance and wear-and-tear costs for vehicles, and this provides fleet operators with a reliable basis on which to calculate their full-service leasing payments. Insurance companies can, therefore, also benefit thanks to Fleet Manager’s ability to calculate realistic premiums for maintenance insurance policies, for example. It can also minimise the risk of in-house calculation errors by utilising a neutral, external cost model.
Businesses utilising the system are able to select any light commercial vehicle, and enter whatever combination of time period and mileage, to find an accurate annual cost projection for running each and every vehicle in their fleet. Where maintenance is concerned, vehicle manufacturers and importers can compare their vehicles with those of their competitors, and find ways to make their offerings more attractive. Last, but not least, in order to increase customer loyalty, workshops can offer their private and business customers monthly service and maintenance packages.
Among other features, the job management module automates the common order release workflow for not just leasing companies, fleet and carpool managers and insurance companies, but also workshops. For affiliated workshops, this means a reduction in the administrative effort for order preparation and handling, thanks to immediate approval and a faster settlement of the invoice (or faster payment) by the fleet customer.
For the fleet customer, time-consuming invoice checks and complaints are reduced to a minimum, and lower process costs through electronic transfer of the order and invoice data mean they are freed to deal with more complex orders. The end result is that the driver is on the road again faster because the vehicle is returned sooner after the service or repair.
Automatic request approval means that fleet/carpool managers do not need to check invoices, while workshops do not lose time waiting for work approval; in both cases, there is a reduction in the time spent on administration. All orders are saved in the electronic vehicle file, where they can be consulted at any time, should the need arise.
What makes Fleet Manager such a powerful solution is that, in addition to the outstanding quality and granularity of the repair and maintenance information that TecAlliance gathers, prepares, and standardises, the system manages diverse maintenance configurations from vehicle manufacturers and can constantly adapt to ever-shifting framework conditions.
Crucially, more than 96% of the up-to-three-year-old vehicle parc is represented within the TecAlliance database, which currently includes 4.5 million maintenance plans, with 24.5 million standard labour times and 8.5 million items of technical data. The integration of the TecDoc catalogue data is also in progress.
TecAlliance Fleet Manager can be administered by the customer, is fit for multiple users, and is available in 24 languages. The ‘forecast’ and ‘job management’ modules are accessible both as a web application or a web service, which can be tailored to integrate into a customer’s existing system.
