Fleet Pro: A Year in Review

The Challenges of Fleet Management

Most fleet challenges facing contractors today are the result of poor time management, Forcum says, particularly in the following areas:

1. Using one software solution to manage your business and another to manage your fleet.

2. Using fleet solutions designed to only track vehicles, rather than an all-in-one solution to track vehicles and manage business workflows.

3. Using software that fails to eliminate the manual processes of fleet management.

“With Fleet Pro, we’re trying to solve these pain points,” Forcum says. 

What is Fleet Pro?

Fleet Pro, an add-on tool to your core ServiceTitan platform, is a fleet-management solution built and designed for contractors in the trades. Forcum says Fleet Pro allows contractors to:

• Track locations of all vehicles and heavy equipment in real-time

• Set up maintenance reminders to manage the lifecycle of vehicles and equipment

• Use geofencing to track vehicle and technician activity within certain areas

“It also gives you access to real-time data and historical information about your technicians, how they're performing in vehicles, and how your vehicles are performing out in the field,” Forcum says. “Ultimately, Fleet Pro helps to reduce costs, improve safety and performance, and minimize risk, all within one single platform.” 

With geofencing, contractors can set geographic boundaries for any location, such as a supply house or a prohibited location, and then monitor all vehicle activity that happens within that geolocation.

Forcum shared one example of a contractor using Fleet Pro to set up geofencing around a local supply house. The contractor started receiving email alerts that one of his technicians was making trips to the supply house every single week, and sometimes multiple times a week, so he asked the tech why. 

The reason? The tech said he consistently needed specific parts from that supply house.

“The end result is that it changed the contractor's flow to make sure they were stocking the appropriate amount of supply at their actual facility so the technician doesn't spend an hour a day going out of their way to a supply house to pick up those parts, and he can be more focused on revenue-generating activities,” Forcum says. “This is a great example of how fleet management can intertwine with a contractor's day-to-day and really help those business processes.”

“Wow, that is so cool,” Mincher says. “Having that fleet data available right in ServiceTitan, where you're already running your business, can actually also help you improve other workflows.”

Fleet Pro new features and functionality 

In the year since Fleet Pro launched, the developers at ServiceTitan continue to expand the product with new features and functionality, Mincher says. Here’s a look at a few customer-favorite updates.

What is GPS timekeeping integration?

As one of the most frequently used and most requested features, GPS timekeeping integration is available to all Fleet Pro users.

“Our GPS timekeeping integration automatically flags any discrepancies that exist between a technician's timesheet and GPS data from Fleet Pro,” Forcum explains. “We compare where the technician said they were when they clocked into the job, when they left the job, versus where the vehicle actually was. So, we're really saving the manual comparison of these two distinct data points.”

This new GPS feature helps contractors save time by automating manual processes and reducing human errors, Mincher says.

The manual effort required to decipher technician timesheet and GPS data is definitely a pain point for contractors, Forcum adds.

“We learned our customers were spending up to at least four hours every single week manually comparing this data,” he says. “Up on one screen, they'd have the technician's time card. Up on another screen, they'd have GPS data. And they're going line by line, manually comparing both of these data points to make sure there's no adjustments happening within the time card itself.”

For customers using Fleet Pro and technician timesheets in ServiceTitan, simply go to the GPS timekeeping integration settings and enable it, Forcum says, or reach out to your customer service manager for assistance.

Once you’ve enabled the GPS integration, the payroll dashboard’s main page will display any discrepancies for a specific pay period. For example, a tech’s timesheet may show a job clocking-in time from 11:32 a.m. to 1:59 p.m., but the GPS shows a timeframe from 12:10 to 12:19 p.m.

“Obviously, this is a discrepancy, so we enable you to quickly accept, adjust, or decline that discrepancy,” Forcum says.

And by clicking into the map view, he says, “You can see the technician where they clocked in on their mobile device versus where it actually occurred according to the vehicle's location. We make it super simple to solve, and it's all in one location.”

What are maintenance reminders?

Unexpected breakdowns happen when techs drive fleet vehicles or operate fleet equipment, but it’s often because companies are not performing regularly scheduled maintenance or because of driver performance. 

“Ultimately, it really impacts contractors’ bottom lines,” Forcum says.

With Fleet Pro’s maintenance reminders, you can set alerts for oil changes, tire rotations, light changes, and other maintenance needs for every vehicle in your fleet.

“Fleet Pro enables you to stay on top of that maintenance cycle before major issues happen with a specific vehicle within your fleet,” Forcum says. “A lot of this is done today within spreadsheets. We simply enable you to do it within one single platform and receive an email when that actual reminder becomes due.”

To use maintenance reminders, simply select the vehicle you want to create a reminder for, choose the type of service needed, set the service schedule (based on mileage intervals, for instance), and you’re done. You can customize who receives the maintenance reminders, such as the fleet manager, owner/operator, or specific technicians.

What is asset tracking?

Customers requested the asset tracking feature to keep better track of other equipment used on the job besides vehicles.

“With Fleet Pro, you can put a GPS device on a vehicle, but historically we couldn't track anything other than a vehicle,” Forcum says. “With asset tracking, we are enabling you to put a GPS device on things like excavators, backhoes, bulldozers, trailers, or even a port-a-potty.”

Asset tracking comes with two new pieces of hardware:

1. Assets with 5-year battery life — adds a tracker to equipment with no engine or motor, such as a steel container, trailer, water tank, or port-a-potty.

2. Rechargeable assets — adds a tracker to equipment powered by engines or motors, such as a backhoe or bulldozer.

“We can track location and set up geofencing to monitor any sort of activity with each of those different asset types,” Forcum says.

To set up asset tracking, Fleet Pro users must contact their Pro account manager to discuss their specific needs and order the appropriate trackers.

Asset tracking keeps a repository of all assets within your company. For each asset, you can set the year, model, unique identifiers, and groups. Then view all company assets on a live map. 

“You can view the asset's last known location and the breadcrumb history for that asset, where it's been, where it moved, any sort of activity in and out of an individual geofence itself,” Forcum explains. “We have some exciting things happening with assets as it relates to monitoring the location related to jobs, etc., in the future.”

3 new Fleet Pro reports: A sneak preview

Currently, Fleet Pro allows customers to view and analyze fleet data through events reporting. This spring, three new reporting features will be available, including:

• Driver Scorecard Report: Easily pull driver scorecards across your entire fleet.

• Trips Report: Review granular data about driver and vehicle performance for each trip.

• Diagnostics Report: Pull engine diagnostics across your fleet.

“Inherently, we'll continue layering on additional reports. This is in addition to what we have today within our event report section. We're just adding some more canned, consistent reports,” Forcum says.

What’s next for Fleet Pro?

As Fleet Pro continues to evolve, Forcum says developers are focused on building a strong fleet-management foundation, while also building unique integrations and workflows with the core ServiceTitan product. In addition to the new reporting features, Fleet Pro future enhancements include:

• Permissions module that allows users to restrict access 

• Camera enhancements for request-status functionality 

• Integrations with other products, such as job and dispatch data on the live map or adding DVR-type capabilities with forms integration

• Automatically placing maintenance reminders on dispatch boards to inform scheduling

>>Ready to take the pain out of your fleet management? Check out Fleet Pro today.