By Paul Hollick, chair, Association of Fleet Professionals (AFP)

A huge amount of interesting output resulted from the recent AFP conference with informed discussion, eye-opening case studies and interesting reports. However, out of everything, I keep returning to a word cloud produced by asking around 200 delegates to name the two most important challenges their business faced in 2023.

I suspect that like most people reading this, I don’t normally have much time to examine data visualisation tools such as this, potentially useful though they can be. However, I’ve found that the more I look at this cloud, the more it creates a really useful and thought-provoking snapshot of fleet management right now.

The three biggest words in the heart of the cloud jump out first and immediately there is something of a surprise.

Few people will be shocked to see cost reduction and sustainability highlighted in 2023 but how many would’ve foreseen employee engagement?

Nonetheless, with a little thought, it makes more sense. Everything from electrification to connected cars need staff buy-in. Fleet management is increasingly outward facing and our members recognise this.

Similarly, in what might be termed the second tier cloud, compliance and EV charging are very much expected but customer experience is a little left field, and perhaps very much sits alongside the surprise of employee engagement.

The cloud is showing how much fleets are working towards providing the best outcomes for their users and increasingly seeing the people who use their fleets as customers. It’s very much a modern fleet manager mindset.

Looking further, you’d expect to see safety and utilisation figure relatively prominently and they remain present and correct, being very much part of what you might call Fleet Management 101.

It’s encouraging to note that AFP members are very much keeping their eyes on the ball when it comes to these crucial subjects.

Finally, it strikes me that the subjects that don’t feature prominently in the cloud are noteworthy. In an era when getting hold of new vehicles is very, very difficult, supply hovers somewhere in the middle distance which, considering how much dialogue there is about the subject within the AFP, is very unexpected.

Also, while there are a whole range of subjects relating to electric vehicles, those two words sit in the smallest type out on the right hand edge. Perhaps this is a sign that EVs are no longer a single topic for fleet managers but have fragmented into a series of issues such as charging and transition.

The potential takeaways from this are quite complex but it seems to me that the cloud does perhaps provide a subtle reframing of what we might think of as the fleet management subjects of the moment.

The topics around which the most noise is made in the fleet sector – often because they are simply the most interesting and immediate – are not always the ones that are foremost in the minds of fleet managers.