It’s no secret that 2020 was an unprecedented year, presenting many unique challenges for Australian businesses.
Curious to learn more, our friends at Fleet Auto News took a closer look at the Australian Corporate Fleets Insights Report to unpack he issues that businesses continue to face in 2021. The latest report was released in October 2020 as a follow up to a similar survey conducted in 2018.
There are currently 460,000 fleet businesses in Australia operating 3.9 million vehicles. The report looked at five trends impacting corporate fleets to help industry participants overcome the challenges presented by these issues.
The top 3 challenges
Unsurprisingly, the key challenge for fleets during 2021 was ensuring compliance with COVID safety requirements. In fact, 60% of respondents nominated it as their main priority.
Rounding out the top three were reducing running costs, such as fuel, and increasing driver safety through training programs.
Bigger fleets have different priorities
Interestingly, the report showed that priorities shifted as fleet sizes increased. Most noticeably, COVID safety didn’t make the top three for larger fleets.
Fleets with over 250 vehicles ranked increasing efficiency, ensuring regulatory compliance, and reducing running costs as their top priorities.
Opportunities lie in increasing efficiency
It stands to reason that increasing business efficiency was the top priority for larger fleets; more mature or sophisticated organisations are likely to have already implemented policies to improve driver safety and manage the risks of COVID.
This means they can focus on maximising utilisation of their assets, in turn creating more opportunities for their suppliers and the wider business.
