GLEN ALLEN, VA--(Marketwired - Oct 29, 2014) - Decisiv, Inc., the leading provider of Service Relationship Management (SRM) solutions for commercial assets, today announced that participants in its recently held webinar on Fleet TCO Analysis: The Real Cost of Poor Service & Maintenance took part in a live discussion that provided valuable insights into how maintenance costs affect every area of a fleet's operation, and how to use TCO analysis to improve efficiency and profitability.
"Only about one quarter of the webinar attendees indicated they were extremely or very confident that they were effectively managing their maintenance costs," said Michael Riemer, VP, Products and Channel Marketing at Decisiv. "That means 75 percent aren't sure they have a handle on what maintenance is actually costing them. While there isn't one standard formula for determining a fleet's true cost of maintenance, the clear consensus is that you have to look beyond the obvious."
When webinar attendees were asked what factors they don't consider when calculating maintenance costs, administrative costs (43 percent), rentals (30 percent), and licensing, permitting and CSA fines (24 percent) were among the top responses.
Marc Thibeau, senior vice president of fleet management solutions at Ryder, said a multi-client study conducted with Ernst & Young showed that "most companies did not have an effective methodology for pulling together all of their known department costs, their less known interdepartmental costs, and even their more elusive and less understood administrative support costs." Ryder has developed a Total Cost of Ownership tool that helps businesses uncover hidden costs associated with fleet ownership, specifically in the areas of vehicle acquisition, maintenance, and disposal.
Nandini Tare, automotive and transportation industry analyst for Frost & Sullivan told Webinar attendees that sometime in 2015 and beyond, all participants within the ecosystem will be connected and the service will be automated. "Overall, the revenue benefits for the entire value chain would be around $3 billion by 2025," she said. "We're seeing the participants in the service supply chain working together and sharing information to help fleets improve vehicle uptime and reduce their overall service costs."
Tare indicated that Frost & Sullivan believes prognostics is still in its early stage of development. "The only way to get full value from prognostics is to have a fully-linked service supply chain that includes telematics, call centers, dealers and fleets," she added. "This connected ecosystem also increases service efficiency in the event a truck does break down. Fleet managers demand vehicle uptime, they want to know what's happening, how things are being handled and how they are being managed. They are looking for significant benefits from an efficient service supply chain."
Riemer concluded that once fleets determine their key success metrics, they need processes and systems with predictable, timely and quality data, which requires an open and connected ecosystem and frictionless flow of data, throughout the service supply chain. "To truly impact their TCO," he said, "these reporting, analytics and other decision support tools need to capture and report on actionable data that drives real change and value."
Participants in the Decisiv TCO Webinar also received a free download of the white paper: Beyond Cost-Per-Mile: The Right Metrics to Measure Fleet Health and a link to the on-demand version of the presentations and discussions.
About Decisiv, Inc. Founded in 2001 and based in Glen Allen, Virginia, Decisiv is the world's leading provider of Service Relationship Management (SRM) solutions for commercial assets in trucking and transportation, coach, construction, mining, power generation, marine, and other related markets. Decisiv's cloud-based software, mobile applications and services enable enterprises, government entities and service providers to more effectively manage, monitor and report on service and repair event interactions independent of asset type, service provider or device. In the North American transportation market, 900 fleets with 365,000 assets and more than 2,000 service locations are using the Decisiv SRM platform to perform more than 250,000 inspections and manage over 1.2 million service events per year. For more information, visit www.decisiv.com .
