Controlling spiralling fuel costs is vital, says Mycompanyfleet

News that diesel prices have hit record levels makes it essential that fleet managers should continue to focus on squeezing fuel costs as hard as possible, says fleet software expert Mycompanyfleet.

With news from the Retail Motor Industry (RMI) that the price of diesel hit a new high, at 143.05 pence a litre on February 17, Mycompanyfleet is also calling on Chancellor George Osborne to re-consider the additional 3ppl rise in excise duty on fuel planned for August.
The previous high for diesel was reported to be 143.04p, in May 2011, at the height of the "Arab spring".
Motoring organisation, the AA, told the BBC that the cost of filling up a commercial van with an 80-litre fuel tank had risen from £90 in February 2010 to £114.
AA president Edmund King said of the diesel price hike: "The impact of record diesel prices will be felt by everyone as higher transport costs are passed on to business and consumers. With some delivery and haulage firms adding a diesel surcharge to invoices, costs will rise faster than most people expect and stoke inflation again."
With the 3p per litre increase in fuel prices still set for August, now was not the time to relax the squeeze on  fuel costs, said Jon Tandy, business development  manager at Mycompanyfleet, the automotive arm of HR software giant NorthgateArinso.

“Even if the Government did decide to scrap the planned increases in August, which we are calling on them to do, fleet managers should not take their eye off rising fuel costs, which  remain high on their list of fleet concerns,” he said.

“High fuel prices are here to stay and fleet managers cannot afford to ignore this fact because they will continue to eat into business profit margins and slow economic recovery,“ he added.

Instead, fleet managers need to make use of the tools at their disposal to analyse fuel costs and identify areas where management action can be taken. Fleet management systems can play a major role in this respect, and Mycompanyfleet software can display fuel cost information graphically on highly visual dashboard displays, utilising exception reports to highlight any areas in need of attention.

The dashboards within the company’s  FleetAcumen fleet management system allow users to set KPIs (key performance indicators) to measure important parameters such as pence per mile, miles per gallon, carbon emissions and league tables of worst and best performing drivers – all the business intelligence measurements a fleet manager would need to make informed decisions on managing fuel costs more effectively.

At the same time, key fuel data can be downloaded from fuel cards directly into the fleet management system, allowing information to be fed back to the fleet manager via management reports, including location of cheapest fuel and exceptions by cost centre and against budget.

“Our offering is unique in the fleet market in that it allows the fleet manager to configure the look and feel of the dashboard to suit their own business requirements, and it’s all encapsulated into our fleet software offering so there’s no need to purchase an additional business intelligence tool to analyse it as there is with other systems,” said Jon Tandy.

“A powerful dashboard offering like ours will allow the user to make more informed decisions using benchmarking techniques, and could easily return savings fuel cost savings of 5-10% or more,” he said.
 

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