Utilimarc, a producer of business intelligence solutions for enterprise fleets, has been working with utility fleets for over 20 years.

The company’s team of data scientists and fleet analysts work with customers to build custom scheduled reports and need-specific dashboards.

The goal is for the customers to get an understanding of their fleet’s performance and reliable data that inform change within the organization.

One of Utilimarc’s initiatives is its rightsizing initiative. It aims to create cost-saving opportunities by rightsizing fleets.

Working With American Electric Power

Utilimarc shared the its results of its rightsizing initiative for the utility company, American Electric Power.

With a fleet of over 8,000 vehicles and 5,000 other trailers and equipment, understanding how many assets AEP needed to efficiently meet demand was one of the major problems addressed with the integration of Utilimarc's Business Intelligence Platform.

"We needed to tackle vehicle usage first — and cost reduction strategies are quick to follow," said AEP Strategic Initiatives Lead Derek Ash.

"Utilimarc helps us see where we're at, where we'd like to go and avoid bad decisions [like removing excess vehicles] that would cost us more than it would save."

As with many large, widespread fleets, it can be tricky to balance between rightsizing assets to save on costs and the natural urge to overextend for the feeling of security.

Using AEP's usage, maintenance, and cost data, Utilimarc's BI Platform was able to identify which vehicles were underutilized and no longer needed. Alternatively, the fleet could use this recommendation to reposition underutilized vehicles for higher efficiency.

The rightsizing analysis was completed on a selection of 3,000 heavy-duty vehicles from AEP's total asset count of 13,000.

It took into consideration the fleet's utilization throughout the calendar year to understand the peaks and valleys in vehicle usage, which helped to pinpoint the "bloat" in the fleet's asset count.

Vehicles Critical to the Fleet

By bringing data in from multiple siloed sources, Utilimarc's BI platform was able to offer AEP insights broken down by each department identifying which vehicles are critical to the fleet operation and which it could afford to release.

Alternatively, the fleet could use this recommendation to reposition underutilized vehicles for higher efficiency. Overall, these kinds of insights are key in reducing fleet costs, reducing waste, and increasing fleet efficiency.