The University of Oklahoma is automating the management of its fleet vehicles using FleetCommander motor pool solutions in an effort to increase efficiencies, improve customer service, and keep costs down.

"Our university is experiencing incredible growth which will greatly increase the demand on fleet vehicles. In turn, we would expect it to create a need for additional vehicles. FleetCommander will encourage vehicle sharing and utilization efficiencies so that we actually will be able to eliminate vehicles each year from our fleet, despite the higher demands. We envision doing that by reducing the number of vehicles we need to add, and by finding opportunities to improve vehicle-sharing capabilities," said University of Oklahoma Fleet Administrator Leon Fourcade.

"We are confident the fleet cost reduction will far exceed the university’s expectations," said Ed Smith, president of Agile Agile Access Control, Inc., creator of FleetCommander. "We routinely see our customers reduce fleet size by a minimum of 15 percent. In a university setting, the savings is even greater due to the efficiencies related to evening and weekend access to vehicles."

Fourcade also said the university hopes that by encouraging car sharing and better utilization, their mileage reimbursement expenses for personally owned vehicles will be reduced. The university has about 400 vehicles in its fleet, with 90 of those being heavy-duty vehicles.

Improved customer service is a major goal for the University of Oklahoma's fleet. FleetCommander's online reservation capability will help in this regard. Until now, fleet customers were forced to limit their access to vehicles to fleet office hours. FleetCommander's secure key control keyboxes will offer the university an opportunity to make keys available to customers around the clock. Once a reservation is made, keys can be removed from the keybox by the authorized user any time, night or day, without the need for staff present.

Fourcade commented, "We're looking forward to FleetCommander showing us many more opportunities to improve the way we manage our fleet."