Touting the advantages of transparency during the truck service and repair process, Decisiv Inc. has inked partnership deals with a couple of major providers, streamlining their operations through the Service Relationship Management platform.
Rush Truck Centers will integrate its RushCare communication management system with the Decisiv platform, providing information from more than 110 service locations across the country, according to the joint announcement from the 2015 Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC) annual meeting in Nashville, TN this week.“We want to improve the service experience for all our customers by streamlining the communication process during service events,” said Brian Mulshine (at right), director of operations technology and innovation at Rush Enterprises. “By working with Decisiv, we can integrate our information with their platform and greatly enhance the value we provide to our mutual customers.”
Mulshine did the math for a large fleet: Typically, 3 to 5 percent of its vehicles will be out of service, and those service events will run four to five days. For a 1,000 truck fleet, that’s 40 or so trucks on the side of the road or in the shop every day.
So a fleet that size will have “rooms full of people” managing the repair process.
“I call them ‘non-value added,’” Mulshine said. “That’s a lot of expense.”
The Decisiv platform has let Rush standardize the repair process and build a system of at-a-glance icons that provide status updates in real time. Simply, this “transparency” eliminates a lot of telephone tag and can get the latest information to a fleet’s decision makers instantly.
“It’s had better communications capability for our shops right away,” Mulshine said.
A similar partnership with TTN Fleet Solutions will enable Decisiv fleet customers to schedule and manage roadside service events through the TTN breakdown and towing service.
Jeff St. Pierre, president of TTN, likens the combination of Decsiv’s SRM with TTN’s breakdown and towing solution to an “easy button.”
“For our joint customers and TTN users that wish to adopt Decisiv SRM technology, this integration enhances the existing communications capability of both platforms,” St. Pierre said. “Fleets can literally turn and forget: Whether they’re reporting it to a shop or managing it on the road or storing it long term while they figure out what to do – there’s never a moment in time where they’re out of the know.”
Another benefit of this transparency comes on the backend with smoother settlements, since there’s a real-Additionally, this level of communication keeps everyone in the loop, including drivers who oftentimes are stranded and feel ignored.
“An uninformed driver is an upset driver,” said La Pierre (at right). “And eventually he becomes someone else’s driver. So the entire time we’re trying to keep the fleet informed, we’re really focused on drivers as well; the drivers feel the they’re in control of the breakdown.”
Indeed, the key to the Decisiv platform is the reduction of “ineffective communication,” emphasized CEO Dick Hyatt.
Decisiv reports that only 16.7 percent of a service event is spent on “wrench time,” and the rest is largely wasted as people wait to get the information they need to move forward with a repair: basic paperwork, estimates, parts, permissions, and notifications of each step along the way.
“These two partnerships are great examples of how we as an industry are starting to connect all these pieces to the benefit of the fleet and driving uptime,” Hyatt said. “That’s what we’re all in the business of doing.”