Choosing the perfect external supplier for any service your fleet might require is far from an easy task. Anyone responsible for this in fleets has to find the best compromise between fleet, business and driver needs, and at the lowest possible cost, though price should not be the overriding factor in a difficult choice. There are a good number of aspects you should consider before giving the green light to a new vendor, and while price is important, it shouldn’t dominate the decision making process.
So now you have chosen your solution, you have considered your top choice of vendors and you look forward to living happily ever after; that’s the end of the story… or is it? You might really believe this is what happens after you have found your (temporary) solution to outsourcing a service. But that’s actually just the beginning. You always need to keep an eye on your vendors and reassess them on a regular basis to see if they actually match up not only with your expectations, but also with the global budget and team.
What then are some of the resources you can use in order to evaluate the work and value of your external vendors?
- Use a system able to track your expenses: whether you have switched to a new vendor or not; or if you are starting to use an external provider for some of your fleet-related tasks, it is always best practice to be able to track your expenses and see how your vehicles behave after servicing or with the interaction of a particular provider. This can help you assess your vendors’ performance and see if the results are inline with your expectations.
- Have open communication with your provider and assess the full process. Check out not only the service provided but anyone else working for the vendor involved in your fleet and check if their performance is close to what you’d expect for the pay. Also, do not put off conversations for a moment; and if anything seems not up to your specifications, try to address this as soon as possible—you can actually test how the vendor tackles similar issues and the solutions they offer.
- Set deadlines. Check on a regular basis if progress has been made and if a service has actually improved; you can even propose this to your vendor as a sort of a trial— allow two months, for example, to a supplier to meet some sort of target. This will push your provider to excel in their performance, to win your commitment as a customer, and you will have the opportunity of a review after the first set deadline.
- Get feedback from your drivers. If some things are not performing as expected, you will probably get the heads-up from your drivers as they will have had direct experience working with the vehicles under the care of the new providers. If this is not the case, make sure you collect feedback from them—they may have not expressed it yet for whatever reason, but they are surely interested in conferring and will provide valuable information for you.
