Arsenault Associates today, June 30, announced the launch of a major fuel-efficiency initiative for its flagship Dossier fleet maintenance management software solutions with a goal of achieving an average fuel-cost reduction of 10 percent for fleet customers.
“Fuel costs are out of hand, and it’s dramatically affecting our customers’ bottom lines,” says Charles Arsenault, chief exeutive officer of Burlington, N.J.-based Arsenault Associates. “We have an obligation to help our Dossier customers respond to economic conditions. To accomplish this, we have realigned our development priorities to concentrate on reducing fleet fuel consumption. We are bringing the full weight of our 30 years’ experience in fleet maintenance software technology to bear on this important topic.”
Arsenault says the company will focus on the three items with the greatest influence on fuel economy: drivers, tire pressure and vehicle operations. Arsenault’s target is to increase its customer’s mpg by a minimum of .5 mpg with an overall fuel cost-reduction goal of 10 percent.
Dossier says it will provide automated operational efficiency comparisons that will rank drivers by efficiencies and variations to equipment norms; this will help fleet managers easily identify problem drivers and quickly raise the fleet’s mpg mean average. Also, the new Dossier Tire Management system completed beta testing and is now fully released and available, according to the company.
“We are in the middle of a release development cycle, but this issue is so important that it dictates a mid-course correction for us,” says Bob Hausler, Arsenault Associates vice president of marketing and technology. “Much of the information needed is already in Dossier, but needs to be better exposed so it can be leveraged. Our development team will combine fuel consumption and cost data with driver, vehicle and tire data to create a new fuel management system that automatically identifies and alerts the fleet manager of poor performing drivers and equipment. It will include automated exception notices, consumption and cost trend analysis, and comparative reporting that highlights items and issues negatively affecting fuel economy. Most importantly, these enhancements will be made quickly and are expected to be delivered to Dossier users in less than 12 weeks.”
Arsenault says the company is taking a holistic approach in its fuel-saving initiative by enhancing and consolidating the automated management tools that address driver, vehicle and tires and give them desktop priority. “In fact, the Dossier fuel-efficiency initiative is already under way,” he says. “Well-run fleets already collect the data needed to track driver and vehicle performance. Our focus now is to make the most of this data and present it in an effective, timely context that shows management what steps are needed to keep fuel use to a minimum. We expect the result for many fleets will be a fuel-efficiency improvement of 10 percent or more.”
