Getting started
Use this guide to organize information and to help make your case to choose the most efficient and capable vehicles to fit your fleet operations.
Step 1: Executive summary
Start with a high-level overview of your fleet recommendations, including any proposed vehicle types such as gas, diesel, or electric. Then summarize the financial, operational and strategic benefits of your proposal and clearly support your recommendations with concise explanations and relevant data.
Step 2: Background and challenges
Describe your current fleet operations and key challenges, like building or upgrading a fleet, meeting changing customer demands, managing costs, improving driver safety, increasing vehicle flexibility, reducing risks and other factors that affect operational performance.
Step 3: Plan objectives
Outline your business objectives for your fleet and explain how your vehicle mix helps you achieve them.
These may include:
- Cutting fuel and maintenance costs
- Minimizing vehicle downtime
- Providing flexibility to support different project types
Step 4: Potential benefits
List and discuss the potential benefits of using or upgrading a fleet, such as:
- Greater operational flexibility
- Improved cost efficiency
- Better fleet utilization
Step 5: Evaluate investment requirements and total cost of ownership (TCO)
Provide a detailed analysis of the cost to build, upgrade or diversify your fleet, including initial vehicle manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP), estimates for yearly maintenance, projected fuel cost, idling cost, residual rate and value, insurance premiums, estimated upfit
Step 6: Analyze operational and strategic objectives
Detail operational and strategic factors that should be considered when building, upgrading or diversifying your fleet, such as:
- Business need for multiple vehicles
- Existing vehicle utilization
- Ongoing maintenance and parts replacement availability
- Technology integration into existing telematics and routing systems
- Vehicle capability matches to specific project types
- Alignment with unique industry needs
- Driver training, satisfaction and safety implications
- Scalability and long-term company growth
Step 7: Determine potential risks
Identify possible risks that may arise from creating or upgrading your fleet, such as significant upfront costs for new vehicle purchases, greater fleet management complexity, specialized maintenance requirements, the impact safety may have on insurance costs and liability and underutilization without proper fleet management tools in place. Future technological developments may also crop up as your fleet ages and new technologies become available.
Step 8: Develop an implementation plan
Create and share a timeline for your fleet recommendations. Schedule project milestones to cover vehicle purchase/replacement timing, telematics platform and data integrations and other important tasks like internal reviews and consensus building steps. You may also want to consider starting with a pilot program adding a few new vehicle types if you need more data before committing to full fleet implementation or an updated vehicle mix.
Step 9: Establish key performance indicators (KPIs)
Decide what KPIs to measure to determine the success of your fleet building or upgrade program. These should include several of the items covered earlier in your proposal like:
- Vehicle utilization rates
- Cost per mile (by vehicle type)
- Vehicle downtime and availability
- Fuel consumption and efficiency
- Total cost of ownership
- Mean time to repair
Step 10: Share recommendations and next steps
Summarize your analysis and state your business case or detailed recommendations for your fleet operations. Outline the next steps in the process, such as budget approvals, vehicle selection and starting the procurement process. Establish firm dates to complete each step to efficiently meet your objectives.
GM Fleet: Your fleet expert
Ready to make the case for expanding or upgrading your fleet? GM Fleet offers expert guidance, insights and analysis to help support your recommendations.
We offer gas, diesel and electric vehicles, fleet management software, safety and driver assistance features
- Expert personalized support
- A full lineup of quality vehicles
- Financing and vehicle procurement options
- Vehicle maintenance services
- Fleet operations management tools featuring powerful telematics,
* data and API services* - Upfitting
* and accessories support
Questions? Get in touch.
We’re dedicated to helping your fleet perform at its best. Let us start you on the journey with the right people, asking the right questions.
