Paragon’s round table breakfast briefing proved the ideal way to kick things off at the Great British Fleet Event 2024 – and John Kendall was an integral part of proceedings.
Having staged two webinars with Paragon from Aptean earlier this year, the 2024 Great British Fleet Event in April gave Van Fleet World the perfect opportunity to invite interested visitors to attend a breakfast roundtable discussion. The early morning event enabled the keen audience to raise issues in person and hear how Paragon from Aptean’s products might be able to help them.
For the session, we were joined by Luke Robinson and Stefan Sharratt from Paragon from Aptean who had taken part in the webinar sessions. The theme chosen for the roundtable was ‘Cost Reduction and Change Management for Fleets’. Cost reduction is clearly an ever-present issue for fleets having to deal with the fluctuating cost of fuel, traffic delays necessitating re-routing, driver availability and the many other issues impacting fleet operations daily.
Similarly, change management takes a variety of forms. This includes the ever-present transition to electric vehicles as well as the more day-to-day matters such as routing and scheduling and managing the daily shifts in driver availability, traffic delays that require routes to be re-scheduled and delivery times challenged.
With so much fleet management software available for LCV fleets, it is not easy to sift through the many options available and determine how much of it is going to work for your operations. Paragon has extensive experience with both HGV and LCV fleets and is familiar with most situations that fleets face. Consultancy on specific requirements is also part of the package.
Paragon was among the first to launch routing and scheduling software capable of automatically adjusting routes and schedules as the day goes on to take account of traffic delays, driver availability and that range of daily issues that fleet managers face that we’ve already referred to. It is this part of the company’s product range and its associated modules that can really help fleets to identify areas where costs can be reduced and new strategies explored.
It was good to hear how the Paragon from Aptean team were able to reassure the various questioners that while they were addressing their quite specific needs, they had many examples of how their products had been able to help fleets facing similar challenges and that they were confident that they could find a way to help them too.
Even the day itself proved to be an illustration of the issues that fleets face regularly. As is often the case, questions were slow to start initially, giving the Paragon team time to explain some of the available solutions. Then, as the session progressed and the questions began to flow, those with similar issues joined in the conversation too. We had prepared a series of questions in case they were needed. These ranged from how the software could help control fleet costs to what sort of cost reductions customers might expect to how the company could help with the EV transition.
We needn’t have worried. As the clock swept around to our finishing time, designed to give participants an opportunity to join the Great British Fleet Event from the start, it became more a matter of watching the clock and finding a suitable lull in the conversation to bring the discussions to a close. What were the outcomes? How has it changed matters for those who took part? For now, they are questions for another day, but hopefully we will be able to provide some answers before long.
Our thanks to the Paragon from Aptean team for their input on the day.