When Does Fleet Data Become Fleet Intelligence?

Running a fleet has always meant managing competing demands, such as keeping vehicles on the road, controlling costs, staying compliant and supporting drivers.

But as fleets electrify, sustainability reporting becomes standard and the data available to fleet managers multiplies, the question of what good fleet management looks like is getting harder to answer.

Will Gill, Chief Product Officer, International Vehicle Payments at Corpay, including UK brand Allstar, thinks the industry has been asking the wrong question. "We have spent a lot of time and energy making more data available to fleet managers," he says. "What we have not spent enough time on is asking what fleet managers actually need to do with it."

The problem with more

Fleet information can sit across multiple systems, from fuel cards and telematics to EV charging platforms, maintenance records and driver data. Bringing those different sources together can create work before the fleet manager has even begun analysing what the information means. More visibility is useful, but it does not automatically make the next decision easier.

New Allstar research surveying mid-market fleet decision-makers across the UK, due to be published this autumn, is exploring exactly this challenge: how fleets manage information and costs, how they move from identifying an issue to taking action and where technology and AI could provide practical support.

"I believe the challenge is not purely visibility," says Will. "Fleet managers can have access to huge amounts of useful information, but they still need to work out what deserves their attention, why it matters and what they should do next."

From data to decision

The shift that matters is not from having less data to more data but from data to intelligence, moving from systems that report what happened towards technology that helps fleet managers understand what it means and what to do about it.

Will's career has taken him from digital mapping at Nokia and HERE Technologies, through EV charging at Plugsurfing and now fleet payments at Corpay. Across those different environments, one product challenge has remained remarkably consistent: how do you turn a large volume of information into something a person can act on?

"Good product design starts with what the user is actually trying to achieve," he says. "In fleet, that means thinking less about how much information you can put in front of somebody and more about what will actually help them make the next decision."

A smarter fleet, then, is not one with more technology but where technology does more of the analytical work in the background, so the fleet manager spends less time looking for problems and more time dealing with them.

That might mean being alerted to a vehicle whose cost per mile is trending upwards before it becomes a significant expense. It might mean a pattern of transactions being flagged for review rather than discovered later in a report. Or it could mean information about EV charging, fuel spend and driver behaviour being brought together into a clearer picture rather than considered in isolation.

"The goal is not necessarily to reduce the fleet manager's role," says Will. "It is to give them back the time and clarity to focus on decisions where their experience and judgement actually matter. Routine analysis, pattern recognition and bringing information together are all areas where technology can carry more of the load."

Looking ahead

Fleet management is going to get more complex: more data sources, evolving reporting requirements and the simultaneous pressures of cost, sustainability and electrification will continue to add new considerations. But the fleet manager's job does not have to become more complicated at the same rate. The fleets that navigate that environment successfully will be those with the clearest picture of what actually matters and the tools to turn that understanding into action.

As Will has argued elsewhere, the answer is not always more data. Sometimes it is a better map: one that surfaces what matters in the context of the decision that needs to be made, at the moment it is useful.

Allstar’s forthcoming mid-market fleet research will explore these challenges in more detail, including how UK fleet decision-makers manage information and costs, the journey from identifying an issue to taking action, and where they see a role for technology and AI. The findings will be published this autumn.