Recently, Idelic’s Hayden Cardiff sat down with Tim Tran, VP of Systems and Technology, at JLE Industries for a discussion on how fleet Safety and IT can best work together. In this webinar, “Common Mistakes Fleet Executives & IT Teams Make” Hayden and Tim highlighted the most common mistakes fleet executives make when dealing with IT, including:
Speaking a Different Language Than Their IT Team
IT team members tend to be very technical, focused on defined processes, workflows, and how something is coded. On the other side, Sales, Operations, and Safety executives often can’t speak that language, which leads to confused requests of the IT team and incomplete descriptions of technological needs. To avoid this issue, fleets should look to hire IT professionals who can do the work of translating a Safety Team’s needs into IT requirements.
A Broken Process for Requesting IT Enhancements
In many fleets, there is no formal process for requesting an IT enhancement. A “request” can be something as informal as an off-handed comment by an executive that they expect the IT department to act on, whether the IT department knows it or not.
At JLE Industries, Tim Tran has instituted a process for requesting enhancements that they have found effective. The executive or department requesting an enhancement must outline the specifics of what they’re looking for in their request. From there, an ROI report will be run to determine how important the request is. Then, if the ROI for the feature is found to be high, the project will be put into development.
Not Looking to Peer Fleets for Examples
Not every enhancement needs to be built from scratch. Before an executive makes a request of their IT department, it can be profitable for them to research the feature they’re interested in, see if similar features exist at other fleets, and then ask their IT team if they can build their requested enhancement using a template that is available elsewhere.
Similarly, if a technology already exists to accomplish an executive’s goal, an IT team’s time can be better spent working on custom enhancements while a fleet purchases the existing technology solution.
Does the Solution You’re Looking for Already Exist?
The Idelic Safety Suite® is the most comprehensive driver management platform in the trucking industry, pulling in data from all of a fleet’s technology systems into a single location.
With Safety Suite, fleets can standardize their training, driver engagement, safety processes, and claims management across their organization, which reduces liability after a crash and demonstrates to insurers that they are operating with safety and risk reduction in mind.If you’d like to learn more about how Safety Suite has helped fleets like Pitt Ohio reduce their claims costs by 48% and improve retention by 43%, watch a 2-minute demo or sign up for a deep dive here.