Hey, welcome back to the Fleet Success Show. I'm Mark Canton, your host today,
and I'm joined by my good friend and colleague, the Fleet Whisperer himself, Steve Swaltz-Kiver,
and we're going to talk about why an FMIS system is so superior to helping you run your fleet to an EAM,
ERP, or anything else out there. Let's start the show.
This is the Fleet Success Show, dedicated to helping you and your fleet succeed,
using the experience of fleet professionals and Hall of Fame fleet legends.
The show that explores how the pillars of stakeholder satisfaction, intentional culture,
resource efficiency, and risk management all combined to lead your fleet to success.
We're glad you're here. Now, let's get into the show.
Hi, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Fleet Success Show. I'll be your host
today, Mark Canton, VP of Product and Consulting here at RTA Fleet, the Fleet Success Company,
and I'm joined once again by, you know, frankly, one of the most brilliant minds in our industry,
the Fleet Whisperer, mentor of mine, and the head of our consulting department, Steve Swaltz-Kiver,
how are you doing, man? I'm doing great. You're very, you're too kind. Thank you.
I'm honest, man. I've had enough people say that to me, unsolicited, that I know I'm not crazy when
I think it. So listen, so I appreciate it. Yeah, it's true, man. Listen, this is what I wanted to
hit you with, because this has been like hitting me in the head a lot lately on my product side here.
I know, I know you've done some product work. You've been on the software side, but you've also
used, you know, many different fleet. So I mean, pretty much every fleet software that's been on
the market for at least a couple of years, unless it's brand new, you've used it, and different types
of systems too, from telematics to true fleet management, information software, as an FMIS,
et cetera, et cetera. And one of the things that I, you know, kind of seems to come in ebbs and
flows is many organizations get either stuck with or they get, you know, for whatever reason,
with using non-fleet systems to try to manage their fleet. Oftentimes, it's like an EAM or an ERP,
you know, an enterprise-wide asset management system or some sort of financial system.
There's some others too, you know, where you'll get like maybe in school bus world, you'll get a
transportation system that has maybe a little tiny maintenance module, or you'll get a telematic
system that can track your PMs. And then people think they can go out and manage their fleet in a
sophisticated way with some of those systems and not using a fleet management information software.
And something you and I've been trying to tell folks, wherever I'm sure you a lot longer, you know,
than me, is you really do need a fleet management information software. And I'm not saying this to sell
RTA, like, please, I implore you, go buy a competitor, but you need an FMIS, right? Like the idea that you're
going to run your fleet with one of these other systems is just insane to me and crazy to me. But
I think, you know, obviously, maybe folks will think I have a bias and certainly I sometimes
struggle to articulate it. So here you are, you've had the experience, you've done both,
you've used us, you've used pretty much all of our competitors. What do you have for us on this? Am I
wrong to feel that way? Or do you agree with me that trying to run your fleet out of an EAM is just
it's just a total order? What's your experience? What are your thoughts?
Well, you're right. I have experience in every one of those areas and I can tell you I did a one
year stay when I was a consultant working on the ground with a button, a button to see kind of
essentially. Okay, so you're running the fleet for them. Back in the Northeast, I was running the
fleet for a year in a city up in the Northeast. Didn't have a fleet system, so I had to build one
out of Microsoft access. That's how much that is how much I believe in fleet management information
systems. And I can tell you, it wasn't overly sophisticated, but at least it got me data that I
could manage a system. So that being said, I mean, I have used many of the competitors to RTA. I've
also used several EAM or ERP systems. And I can tell you anything short of an off-the-shelf system
that is fleet centric will not get you where you need to be. And that's an absolute. You know,
I've used them all. I used one that we had to convert. It was at EAM and that's a problem at EAM.
That a Fortune 500 company. And the irony of this still gets me to this day. We actually had a
purpose built fleet system that they got rid of so that they could go to this EAM and have a
solution worldwide. And I still remember the 40 clicks to get a work order and all the problems we
had to do that, you know, with no good data that we could to really download. And it was just a
complete disaster. And I did a lot of analytical return on investment analyses on that,
showing them that other people had tried to use that EAM. And I can tell you if two well-known companies
that use it, I won't say their name, but two of them are very prominent, big, large fleets in the
country. One of them is telecommunications fleet. They spent $15 million in abandon it. And then
there was another large rental company fleet, rental and repair fleet. And they did exactly the
same thing after many years into it. So you always tell people, you know, make sure you don't waste your
money. Make sure you do your due diligence on this because you get too far down the road. And we
know having been in the software business, how hard it is to get people out of a bad system if
they're in it. Because that becomes a huge sub-cost. And frankly, some people might even get too lazy
to move out of that system. Change management issues. Yeah, change management all of that. So yes,
don't settle for something that's sub-standard. You need to get a good fleet management system.
Right. So let's hit a few points on that. I mean, number one, the fleet management information
system. That is the central repository for all of your fleet data. That's where pretty much
everything you do is going to live. And all of your key decisions will be made, you know, based on
the analytics you do from the data that you get out of that system. Right. Now, you alluded to
some of the troubles that you have within it. So first off, the EAMs and the ARPs, they're great
for what they originally intended for. But any management of fleet is sort of like an add-on
module. And it's not really the focus or the design of what those systems are, right. They're
managing assets, let's say, but a fixed asset is very different from a fleet asset in the whole
multitude of ways, not the least of which is they appreciate. They don't depreciate.
But talk to us. You alluded to a few of them. Talk to us about like some of the things you ran into
that would just, let's say, maybe really challenging to do that would have otherwise been easy to do,
whether it was with us or with one of our competitors. Again, I'm not, I really don't want this
to be a salesy thing. I'm trying to, you know, like you said, an off-the-shelf system. There's some
things that you can rely on pretty much any or every off-the-shelf system to be decent at
least. So what are some of those differences, if you don't mind, the things that jump out at you?
Well, I think the first thing is if you don't have a fleet system, it's really hard to get granular
level costs. And if you don't have a fleet system, it's really hard if you're using an EAM or
an ERP system to get costs that are attributed directly to the vehicle just because of the nature of
way they were. The other thing that's very difficult are doing transactional types of activities in
those systems like work order management. You just mentioned 40 clicks to get to work order.
Things like that are just such a waste of time. Whereas a system that's designed to help you do
work orders is going to make it there. Yeah, it's going to be, it's going to expedite all that
process. Right. The other thing too, that's a real headache if you're not using a fleet system,
is just trying to get the data out. Get a report, you know, because it usually comes out very
convoluted because it's not built purposely for fleet. So you have to do a lot of hoops to get
the data out so you can try and understand where your data is usually exercised. So yeah, those are,
I mean, there's a, I can go out, I got a list of a hundred things probably I can go on. But essentially,
they're the systems that are not fleet or built for other purposes. And so you're trying to put a,
you know, around peg in a square hole, essentially, to try and make it work.
Right. That's where you run it on the problems. Yeah, I mean, the features aren't designed.
The configurations are more challenging, you know, like you just mentioned reporting, you know,
out of box reporting is not going to be there. You're going to, you're going to be almost
completely dependent on custom reporting to get the things that you need. You know,
and the funny part about that too is that we, I think I understand, like I understand why
organizations want to EAM and want to data, but there's other ways to get there. I mean, on this
one, I will speak for ourselves. We have open APIs. You know, we can build you an integration. The,
the, you know, the other company can, you can get a third party, your own IT folks, probably can do it.
And you can get all the data that you're hoping to track in that EAM out of the FMIS. In most cases,
pretty easily, so that you can still have a, that system of record for the finance folks. You know,
and like you said, about licensing and cost, it's not like it's not going to cost you more to expand
that other system to enable all of the fleet folks to be able to use it as well. So there's not, like,
there's not a lot gained there. I'm not, you know, I get the desire to want to be all on one system,
but it just strikes me as a overreach. I think some of that, you know, or
could be a lack of respect sometimes for fleet. I mean, in a case where I had to,
interesting, sometimes it's just political. I mean, you can't get around it.
But I had actually gone through the due diligence in one case and was forced to use an EAM. So I mean,
it, you can win some, you can lose some. But in that particular case, we had a pretty well-known IBM
product that was Fleet Centric. And we also had another product that was a trucking company product.
And I had proposed scaling those up for $2 million. So we could keep the Fleet Centricity.
But their desire to go worldwide on one system really outweighed that. And I got that, you know,
it, you know, fleet in a lot of respects, in this case, was one of many pieces of that company.
You know, and so, you know, we kind of lost that to that battle. But I think eventually it
probably worked out fine because they basically decentralized the fleet anyway in the long run.
So, so maybe they had a bigger issue than I knew about at that time. But those are the kind of issues
that come into, you know, to play too. You've got sometimes politics involved.
Have you ever won on that front like they wanted to go that way? Or maybe when you stepped in it was
that way and you got them to go to the FMIS? Not, not specifically that way, but I did have a,
when I was working for the state, well, one of the states, I did have a system that was subpart.
It was a system that actually was an EAM and it actually had a fleet module. But they didn't buy
the fleet module. And so we went out to do a business requirements and an RFP to see what it would
cost to get that. Cost came in. I thought they were reasonable, but they thought they were a cost
prohibitive. So ultimately what we ended up doing, we were using a vendor at the time. A third party
fleet management company vendor that was doing a lot of our maintenance because we were predominantly
outsourced with very few jobs except for the DOT and some of the minor operations. So we were able
to leverage them and use their system, which was actually a pretty good system. It wasn't perfect,
but it did work. Them meaning the DOT folks? No, we use the, the FMIS, FMC's. All the FMC's, the FMC's software.
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to request your free copy today. What are the benefits that you'd say to folks who are maybe
listening again who are arguing for this, who are saying we want the FMIS? I mean you mentioned
some of them already easier to get to the data. Built off the shelf, it's going to be a little bit
easier or more intuitive to use. What are the thoughts come to mind? I mean just doing any kind
of analytics, any kind of cost scenarios, any of that kind of stuff really is difficult to get
if you don't have the right system. Right. I mean I think you're going to get much faster time
to value, right? Well, I think part of the issue is you're going to have better time management.
Yeah, exactly. I mean because you're trying to do workarounds in an EAS system or EAM system that's
just doesn't have the tools that you need to run the reports in the data that you have.
Yeah, so maybe you have a work order, but like you said, your 40 clicks in, but it's not set up
to be a shop management system. You know, I think about our system and about our competitors,
right? I mean we're set up. We're here to manage that asset for you from the moment since before
you order it from when it's a bid, you know, all the way to it's been disposed, right? And
everything in between. And if it's a motor pool vehicle, we're going to have motor pool management
tools. And if it's, if you're doing work on it, we're going to have work orders and we're going to
have a shop management tool and shop scheduling and base scheduling and seeing the work orders and
whether or not the technicians are, you know, are building enough hours to work order. Are they
meeting their SRTs? Are they efficient? I know all those. I mean just something simple. None of
that's an idea. Yes, codes in an EAM is a problem. With a great point. Yeah, right. Like,
classic codes in the area and in one of those systems that are not purpose-filled, it's a problem.
Scheduling preventive maintenance, tracking warranty and recovery and SRTs, like you've mentioned,
downtime, all that is a problem if you're trying to use those systems because they're just not made
to do that. Right. Yeah. And a big one, and this is true of the AAMs, the ARPs, and all the other sort of
minor maintenance modules you see out there and other systems and it's the parts, man. You know,
a sophisticated parts inventory management system is super important. It's super important if
you, especially if you have an in-house, obviously if you have an in-house shop. And when you look at our
parts inventory systems and even data about some of our competitors, like they blow away most
warehouse management systems because of the level of complexity, you know, you need all of the
art inventorying tools with all of the specificity around the automotive industry and the, you know,
and things like cores and warranties and mean times to failure and how much should you stock and
just, you know, the level of sophistication, I've never seen anything close to that in an AAM.
And again, I'm not knocking them. I think they're great for what they do. And I think if you need your
data in that system to satisfy management and leadership, great, man, build, build a, you know,
ping those APIs and get the data that they need into that system so that they can have their one
system. But if you want something that's actually, you know, going to help you run your fleet and
manage your fleet, you need an FMI-S. If it's just a matter of putting the data somewhere to
meet some requirement, well, I guess you can do that with anything. You can do that in an Excel
sheet, but it's going to be more work for you instead of helping you do the work. And I think that's
really the difference, right? I think these other systems create work for you to track what the,
what has been done so that you can comply as opposed to a really good FMI-S is going to make the work
that you do every day easier. It's going to streamline it. It's going to be something you want to use
to, you know, for that reason. And that's to me what, like, what jumps off the page for me between
the systems in my experience with it. Well, I mean, the extra cost. There's so much. If you want to really
use an EAM or an ERP system, then you're going to have to invest the time and effort to do some pretty
good interface integrations. Yeah. And they're out there. You can do that, but I mean, that's that,
if I were had to use an EAM, that would, that's what I would propose. Let me buy an FMI-S and let's
integrate it to the system, match the fields, get you the data you need, get us the data we need.
Right. You know, so those are, that's kind of a bridge you can put between that. I know it's a
little bit extra cost, but still it's really the best way to go if you got to use a system. Yeah,
absolutely. And again, that time for value is going to be key because the systems are going to be
designed for the work that you do. So, you know, any new changes, you know, change management's always
the thing, but you're going to be able to into it the overwhelming majority of the functionality
in an FMI-S if you have any experience as a fleet professional. You get into that EAM, it's like
learning a new language. If you've never touched that EAM before, it's like, okay, I speak English and
I'm going to go to try to learn Greek. If you're getting, we've actually done a number of studies
in our consulting practice where we've had to, I remember helping a city a couple years ago
where we were faced with that. Tell us why the EAM is not good and we're that their forces into.
And we came up with a pretty good study and let them know that. And actually, to my delight,
they actually went away from the EAM in that city and allowed them to buy a fleet management
information system. So, if you have, if you have the essential tools and analytics behind that,
and you can articulate that to manage, but they can usually figure out, you know, that's very quickly,
that's not a good solution. But I think you start with by asking, I mean, because typically EAMs are
financial driven, typically that's the business's core financial management tool. And all you got to do
is start out by asking, what do you need from the fleet? What do you want to see? Do you want to see
depreciation? Do you want to see transactional maintenance costs? Do you want to see historical
things and ask them what they need to see to be successful? And then, then you can start refuting
some of those arguments because the EAM cannot give you those. Because they'll tell you what they need,
that usually benefits the fleet management information system instead. Right. That's a good point.
That's a great point. Interesting. All right. Well, I think I've beaten that one up pretty good.
You have any other clothes and thoughts for our audience who may be going because I know a lot,
for whatever reason, this comes in ebbs and flows in every few years, we just run into a lot of
fleets that are either trying to get out of an EAM or being told they're going to get forced into one
and trying to fight that. It just seems to kind of come in ways, you know, or in cycles. And it seems
to be, there seems to be an uptick in that recently. So any other closing thoughts for folks?
Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. Yeah, I would say if you're really getting forced that direction,
you ought to find an independent third party maybe to help you out. That's a good thought. You know,
that doesn't have to be us. Certainly that could be anybody. But somebody that can really articulate
the value of both systems, someone that has lived that experience and somebody that can really
push that envelope to get the system that you really need to manage your fleet. And it really
comes down to total cost of ownership and how you manage your fleet correctly. Right. Yeah.
All right. With that, Steve, thank you so much for taking some time to talk with me. I appreciate it.
And to us, everyone listening out there, thank you for being with us today. If you have any
questions for us or comments or, you know, have any topic ideas you want us to do, please email us
at
[email protected]. And with that, I'll say once again, thanks, Steve. Have a great one. Take care,
everybody. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it
with others. Post about it on LinkedIn or leave a review. Want to learn more about our fleet
management software, Fleet360? Check us out at rtafleet.com. If you want to learn more about
having your fleet evaluated by our consulting team, go to fleetconsulting.com.
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