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The start point for the best source of fleet information |
I read a feature on a news site this week reminiscing about Visicalc. For the uninitiated among you - or just the young - this was the first ever spreadsheet, launched in 1979 and the forebear of Microsoft Excel. Some say it was the first "killer app" because accountants bought the Apple II needed to run it simply to get hold of the software.
A lot of people find it pretty difficult to imagine their business lives without spreadsheet software. It is just so very useful for so many things. This level of reliance is perhaps why, as a software company, we sometimes find that even some quite large fleets are managed with Excel. Usually, someone pretty adept at writing macros has come up with half a dozen that produce the most vital information they need.
If you go back to the early days of PCs, the differences between what you could do with spreadsheet software and what you achieve do with specialist fleet systems were, in some aspects, not that dramatic. For some organisations, depending on their priorities, it was just not worthwhile making the investment for the additional features that fleet software provided.
Three decades and more later, that is definitely no longer the case and, as a company, we find it pretty frustrating when someone tells us that they are fine managing their fleets with a spreadsheet. In 2016, the best spreadsheet in the world will not give you a fraction of the level of sophistication that is available from even the most basic fleet software. While they are good at handling data at an elementary level, they provide little when it comes to security, integrity, ease of use and integration with other software.
What this means is that some of the largest fleets are falling further and further behind best practice in all kinds of areas, from duty of care to cost control and, as more and more data becomes available to fleets all the time, they will fall even further behind.
This sometime resistance to change has lead to some pretty frustrating meetings in years past. When you put a modern fleet system alongside Excel, it is very clear, very quickly which is the vastly superior management tool for drivers, vehicles and other assets.
I am pleased to say that, over time, we are seeing more and more spreadsheet users come around, although, in some cases, it has taken a very long time indeed. Now, we just need to convince vehicle workshops that don't want to give up their whiteboards.
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