As with running any business, managing a fleet comes with its own fair share of paperwork. Although today, the ‘paper’ part of paperwork is becoming less common as more fleets are transitioning to digitizing their documents. While many fleets are already partially paperless through their utilization of computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) or transportation management systems (TMS) in the office, the use of mobile devices and applications for using these same systems is a continuing trend.
For example, drivers can capture images of documents, such as driver vehicle inspection reports (DVIRS), using a mobile application or fill the DVIRs out directly on the application to quickly and efficiently let the maintenance shop know if something is wrong with their vehicle. Oftentimes, these mobile applications are integrated within the main fleet office’s computer management systems to distribute the documentation to the correct system (dispatch, accounting, maintenance, etc.).
By incorporating the practice of digitizing business documents throughout an organization – including driver and the maintenance department documents – fleets may lower operational costs and improve efficiencies. This process begins with evaluating the equipment and programs available, understanding the process of transitioning to a paperless operation, and best practices for organizing these digital assets.
Before digital
Taking a step back, before mobile apps and desktop computer systems, fleets had to do everything manually. In the office, documents were stored in filing cabinets and had to be copied, stapled, and faxed or mailed to their destinations. This documentation process also meant that employees would have to physically search for those documents in order to find them – if they could find them. Misplacing a document or losing it in transit was not uncommon.
This form of documentation was also fairly inflexible. Once a fleet had their documents organized in a certain way, it was unlikely the fleet would be able to change it.
“It’s a rigid system that doesn’t allow for the evolution and growth of the business,” says Will Chu, CEO and co-founder of Vector, a provider of transportation management solutions for fleets. “A fleet may later decide to organize their documents by customer but can’t because they would have to re-file all their documents.”
The manual process was just as hard on the drivers. Before the digital age, drivers used a variety of methods to get paperwork back to the office. Between truck stop scanning, faxing, overnight envelopes, and traveling back to the office or a specified drop-off point, drivers had many options.
But, as Chu points out, “All those methods are either slow or expensive, or both, so it has a huge impact on the fleet's bottom line.”
Aside from the cost and taking up the drivers’ time, these methods came with other challenges, such as finding the drop-off location for overnighting the documents or even finding working equipment. Think of how often something goes wrong with a printer or fax machine, Chu notes. Think about the number of truck drivers using and abusing that equipment all day long.
“Many trucking companies today are trying to prevent their drivers from having to stop at a truck stop just to scan documents,” says Wes Pollock, vice president of sales and strategic partnerships for Eleos Technologies, a provider of mobile apps for trucking fleets. “Fleets realize that when their trucks are at a truck stop there's a higher likelihood of having damage to the equipment. They are at a higher risk of having small accidents while at a truck stop.”
With all these potential complications, it makes sense that fleets are taking the digital route.
Consider the workflow
“The value of maintaining electronic documents goes way beyond the elimination of paper,” says Cindy Nelson, vice president of marketing and recruiting and onboarding solutions for EBE Technologies, a provider of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered workflow solutions for the commercial market.
Through using CMMS or TMS along with mobile applications for document digitization, fleets are provided incredible value, notes Nelson, “from streamlining processes, improving productivity, improving accuracy of information, providing insight to bottlenecks in operations, allowing the appropriate people to make more timely decisions due to real-time access to documents, [and a] reduction in overhead of managing transactions which can be automated through AI driver workflows.”
Additionally, when a fleet uses a CMMS or TMS, it allows them to operate between any disparate systems such as dispatch and accounting. Nelson notes that when it comes to updating any documents in these separate systems, they only have to do it once, as the CMMS or TMS will communicate that update between all systems.
Digitizing documents can help fleets to mitigate liability. Should an accident occur, having documents such as maintenance records easily tracked and available would provide fleets with the evidence necessary to prove proper inspections were done or that the asset had been serviced before the incident occurred.
From paper to digital
When transitioning from paper to digital documenting, there are a few important aspects fleets should keep in mind: equipment, training, and time.
Depending on whether the fleet is partially digital already (using a CMMS or TMS in the office) or handles all paperwork manually, some thought will need to be put into whether the fleet has the proper equipment to setup document digitization. The type of equipment tends to be more of an issue for the fleets who already have CMMS or TMS in place and are looking to integrate a mobile app for the drivers. Fleets should think about congruity between the app and the equipment, image quality, retention, and range.
Compatibility
Ryan Sparrow, DocumentPower product manager for McLeod Software, a provider of transportation management and trucking software solutions to the trucking industry, notes that fleets must be sure the drivers have capable handheld devices that are compatible with the app. The decision to provide the drivers with a tablet or other mobile device is up to the fleet, but regardless of whether the drivers use their own devices or have company-provided devices, fleets need to ensure whatever mobile application they choose will work with those devices.
Image quality
When drivers use a mobile app for document scanning, the image quality must be good enough that the documents can be used for the fleet’s records, billing, or any potential legal proceedings. McLeod Software’s Sparrow notes that their mobile app, McLeod Anywhere, converts any captured images from an 8-megabyte color image to a 20-kilobyte black and white TIFF image, which is the industry standard for storing images in document management systems.
There are two advantages to having the images stored in this way, says Sparrow. One, the driver is not incurring massive data charges on their personal phone plans. A small and transferable file is key in keeping the drivers using the app. Many fleets do not subsidize the drivers’ phones’ data packages.
Additionally, the image enhancement built into the app will despeckle, deskew, and improve the image color, making the whites brighter and the blacks darker. This enhancement is essential, as the environment these images are captured in – such as the truck cab or at a rest stop – isn’t always well lit.
Another aspect to image quality comes from the device being used. When comparing a smart phone’s camera to a tablet’s camera, the phone is likely to have better image quality than the tablet.
“Tablets, traditionally, have not been used for taking pictures, so the camera quality on tablets has not caught up to what we've seen on the latest generation of phones,” Eleos Technologies’ Pollock says. “As companies are now using mobile apps as their driver interface, they’re putting commodity-grade tablets in the truck.”
The issue with these tablets, notes Pollock, is most of them don’t have a flash function for the camera, which is helpful in getting a good image. Fleets must carefully choose products before purchasing and trying to put them to use.
“We have seen companies make that transition only to realize that their image quality starts suffering because of a poor-quality camera on a tablet,” Pollock says. “We always encourage our customers to test multiple tablets and to test it in a real-world environment to see what's going to work best for them.”
Retention
Every fleet is going to have documents that are must-keeps and others that can be discarded after a certain period of time. It is important for fleets to understand whether their mobile apps and CMMS or TMS have retention limits. If fleets aren’t careful, documents they need could be deleted due to the retention parameters on the device the documents are stored on.
Doug Schrier, vice president of product and innovation for Transflo, a provider of an all-in-one software for drivers and fleet managers, notes there are systems with built-in retention functionality.
If there is no retention built into the system, it is up to the fleet to decide on a purging process for unnecessary documents.
“With electronic files, retention rules can be put in place based on document type, regulations, company policy, et cetera, and the documents will automatically be purged or hidden depending on the specific rule,” EBE Technologies’ Nelson states. “This eliminates the potential of maintaining documents that should have been purged and, since they exist, can be used as ‘discoverable’.”
Range
At some point it is likely a driver will find themselves out of range and unable to remotely send captured images from a mobile device. Fleets must be considerate of this when choosing a mobile app. While on the road, drivers may not always have a strong signal to a data network that is needed in order to send these documents back to the office. In some mobile apps, such as Vector Mobile, the app will hold the image until the driver is back in range and send the image automatically once reception is found.
This will alleviate any worries the driver has about whether they are in a good area or if it’s a good time to scan. The driver can just scan the document and move on.
Once a fleet determines the best smartphone, tablet, laptop, etc., for their needs, they should make training a priority. Service providers offering document organization and digitization can provide this training. For example, with the Vector Mobile app, the company’s customer success team provides resource material and videos to the drivers, can host webinars, or go onsite for training while the app is being implemented.
It is important to remember that the process of transitioning from paper to digital will take time.
“Everyone is always looking for a silver bullet to take existing files and convert them to digital, but at the end of the day, it is somewhat of a manual process to scan and index the document files,” EBE Technologies’ Nelson says. “Some companies choose to keep legacy files in paper and the go-forward process is all digital. Depending on the application or department, the legacy files may become obsolete sooner than later and the energy to convert them to digital is not relevant.”
It should also be noted that there is no legal reason to keep paper copies of documents. Since the 1990s, the FMCSA has encouraged motor carriers to use digitized documents for information collecting and record-keeping purposes.
Best practices for organization
After transitioning from paper documentation to digital, fleets will need to decide how to organize the documents in a way that works best for their operation. To start, McLeod Software’s Sparrow says fleets must consider three questions:
- What is the document?
- Where does it belong?
- How can the document be retrieved from the system?
“With answers to those three questions, [fleets will be] able to architect the structure of [their] document management system,” Sparrow says.
For a fleet’s CMMS or TMS, organization will come from properly indexing each document.
“The key to the organization is being able to attach as many identifiers [indexes] associated with the documents [regardless of department or archive] as necessary so that they can be easily retrieved by personnel,” EBE Technology’s Nelson says. “A document may be accessed by doc[ument] type, driver code, order number, shipper number, or accident ID.”
As for document organization within mobile apps, many apps come with a filtering option to make searching for and finding documents easier. Drivers can filter by year, type of document, company, location, etc. With this sort of search functionality, drivers are able to access documents quickly and efficiently.
Conclusion
Even as more fleets make the transition to digital documentation, the importance of maintaining those documents stays the same.
“It is critical for fleets to keep historical records to ensure complete visibility of operations,” says Matt Gunzenhaeuser, sales director, U.S. and Canada, Webfleet Solutions, a Bridgestone company that provides telematics and fleet management solutions.
In utilizing document digitization, fleets are able to greatly improve operational efficiency through boosting productivity, enhancing accuracy, streamlining processes, and much more.
