Sustainability focus leads to an increased demand for global reporting, says Fleet Logistics

Fleet Logistics is seeing increased demand for its global reporting platform on the back of the growing movement to fleet electrification and sustainability in most parts of the world.

Many countries have set up phase-out plans for combustion engine vehicles at the end of the decade, some partially even earlier, leaving electric power, and possibly hydrogen, as the only viable alternatives for corporate transport.

With a shrinking window of opportunity, Fleet Logistics reports that many major international companies, with operating divisions in all parts of the world, are now looking to evaluate their existing vehicle fleets in terms of carbon emissions and power train make-up, as well as their TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).

They are then benchmarking the resulting analysis against their corporate sustainability targets to help inform their next steps to achieving their environmental goals, whether to move to electrification, where possible, or to limit emissions with the introduction of a CO2 cap for new vehicles.  

Fleet Logistics says that companies headquartered in Europe are leading the movement, followed by US-based companies, all of whom want to reduce their consumption of greenhouse gasses and increase levels of monitoring.

A large number of countries worldwide are bound by the terms of the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change, adopted by 196 Parties at COP 21 in Paris which came into force in November 2016. Its goal is to limit global warming to well below 2.0, and preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels.

The 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties, COP26, is being hosted by the UK at the Scottish Event Campus (SEC) in Glasgow in November.

With climate change pressure mounting, demand for Fleet Logistics’ global reporting platform has increased in recent months as it gives a transparent picture of companies’ global position and allows meaningful trend analysis for sustainability as well as cost management.

Madelaine Webster, Global Consulting Manager Fleet Logistics, said that growing numbers of companies were increasingly taking their environmental commitments very seriously against a backdrop of growing political consensus on global warming.

“As we work toward reaching targets set out in the Paris agreement, more businesses are pledging to take action by reducing their own greenhouse-gas emissions. Understanding current levels, by accurate measurement and reporting on progress, plays a significant part in that.

“Fleet Logistics’ global reporting platform is the ideal tool to help make those measurements and guide the analysis and strategic decision making involved in hitting targets,” she said.

The global reporting solution is a web-based platform that provides global data consolidation and reporting that is accessible to end users 24/7, 365 days a year, based on data feeds from suppliers such as leasing companies, vehicle manufacturers, energy suppliers and other third parties in the fleet supply chain.

The solution contains a number of pre-defined reports on areas such as asset details, renewal cycles, powertrain mix, spend and carbon footprint to name but a few, along with the ability to create custom-tailored reports to suit individual company and departmental requirements.

The solution also has the ability to select cost categories, metrics and KPIs, in any language and harmonise them for consistency in terms of reporting and benchmarking.

Fleet Logistics can harvest the data from a client company’s supply chain and perform the upload and analysis on behalf of the client, while the light touch, easy-to-use platform also allows clients to perform the task themselves should they prefer.

The resultant analysis provides a valuable insight into the composition of the global fleet, with overall fleet statistics that are both accurate and easily manageable, while providing the ability to drill down into the detail and extract any required information.

The platform can also report across various internal functions such as HR, finance, corporate sustainability and procurement, analysing the data from the perspective of each function.

The global reporting platform provides fleet transparency for fleet operations across the globe,” said Madelaine Webster.

“It visualises data to allow meaningful analysis and inform strategic decision-making. At a time when most major companies, including ourselves, are focused on their sustainability management in the light of growing pressure from Governments and societal goals, it’s not perhaps surprising that we find demand for its services rising steadily given the value derived. With the importance of sustainability in car fleets, no international organisation can allow itself to fly blind on this subject.”