Taking its vehicle lifecycle business model another giant leap forward, leasing provider Fleet Advantage is touting its new ATLAAS (Advanced Truck Lifecycle Administrative Analytics Software) Unified solution. Built off the original ATLAAS, Unified takes basic per mile cost reporting several steps further, breaking down those costs into useful dashboards that not only help fleets decide how long to keep assets, but helps them better understand the underlying costs of those assets.
“Everything before was based on the company, now it’s based on the user,” said Jim Griffin, COO and CTO of Fleet Advantage, during the National Private Truck Council’s (NPTC) 2019 Annual Education Management Conference and Exhibition, at the Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza, in Cincinnati, Ohio.
ATLAAS Unified brings to fleets new charts and graphs – over 400 in fact – that help them better manage their assets to ensure proper lifecycle cost management.
Since the launch of ATLAAS, Fleet Advantage has accumulated over 14 billion miles of data as part of the company’s tracking and analysis and monitors over 56,000 vehicles offering advantages in benchmarking of operating costs and providing monthly, quarterly and annual fleet reporting for Total Cost of Ownership.
ATLAAS Unified adds intuitive dashboards and allows users to create their own custom view with the information that interests them most: financial data for CFOs, vehicle performance for fleet managers, and maintenance data for repair personnel.
Data included spans five categories: fleet details, fuel, maintenance & repair, variable costs (combines the data from fuel and maintenance & repair into a single dashboard), and “tipping points.”
“Tipping points will tell you when the truck is costing you more money than it would cost you for a new truck,” said Travis Wynes, director of fleet services for Fleet Advantage.
The data included in ATLAAS Unified gives fleet managers insight into everything from operational costs, maintenance and repair (M&R) data, replacement vehicle savings, vehicle servicing and histories. It can be looked at across the entire fleet, or by individual unit. Higher fuel usage or costs per mile could be an indication of engine issues. ATLAAS Unified allows fleet managers to dig into the fuel usage by location to identify these types of issues.
On the maintenance side, data now includes VMRS (vehicle maintenance reporting standards), allowing fleets to track individual component failures to find trends.
“We’re starting to see our customers pay more attention to how their technicians enter the codes so it [feeds the VMRS system],” Griffin said.
Fleet Advantage can even compare its units in a fleet to non-Fleet Advantage units if the fleets supply the data on those assets. Monthly reports are supplied to fleets showing the best and worst performing vehicles in the fleet.
Launched last fall, ATLAAS Unified is “really starting to pick up with our customers,” Griffin said.
Depending on the level of detail, fleets can get down to specific granular levels of cost per mile for tires, for instance. There is also an invoice cost section which can help fleets that perform maintenance based on time periods rather than miles (the per-mile cost would naturally be higher in these cases).
One key aspect of the solution is its ability to weed out problematic data so it doesn’t skew results. For example, if a truck reports miles driven but not fuel used, that data will be funneled into an “exceptions” category so the fleet can see that there is a reporting problem and try to correct it.
The introduction of ATLAAS Unified is part of Fleet Advantage’s lifecycle management approach to assets.
“We’re not managing drivers; we’re not managing routes,” Griffin said. “We want to manage that asset, it’s total lifecycle.”
