Kriete Leasing & Rental
With SRM Sentinel from Decisiv, Kriete Leasing & Rental is improving customer service and interacting more effectively with service providers
With 1,283 commercial assets in use by a wide variety of businesses, the complexities of meeting the service needs for its fleet of Class 5 through 8 trucks and tractors can be formidable for Kriete Leasing & Rental. Adding to the challenge are the many specialized and customized units in its fleet as well as the range of maintenance services required to keep them operating efficiently, productively, and safely.
Not that long ago, Kriete Leasing & Rental employed longstanding but inherently inefficient practices to accomplish that task. The old school way of doing things involved spreadsheets or maintenance software, and in many cases manual paper processes to track units due for service, activity and logs of contacts with customers and their drivers.
“We manage ten scheduled services for trucks at different intervals and there are several triggers for when service is required,” explained Mike Blimling, Operations and Fleet Maintenance Manager at Kriete Leasing & Rental. “These are basic to full contract service programs for standard, heavy-duty and severe-duty vehicles that can be based on days, hours or mileage.”
What Kriete Leasing & Rental needed, Blimling noted, was a service management platform for all maintenance services that would allow it to schedule and track activity across in-house and external service provider locations. It would also serve as a single repository of information and service records.
Decisiv Technology is meeting wide ranging service management needs
About two thirds of the service needs for the Kriete Leasing & Rental fleet are met by Kriete Group dealers. The remainder of the work, predominantly tire and road services, is handled by preferred outside vendors. Their major outside providers include other OEM dealers and truck stop chains.
“Speed of repair is our main concern so Kriete locations are always our first choice,” Blimling stated. “That has value to the Kriete Group enterprise as a whole, but our primary obligation is to our customer base so we are always focused on providing the fastest route to repair. Our goal is to keep their vehicles serviced on time and up and running without any unnecessary downtime.”
Throughout its operation, Kriete Leasing & Rental has implemented a range of service and support technologies for driving on-time preventive maintenance that in turn improves uptime for customers. Its customer-facing applications include web-based management platforms such as ASIST from Mack and Volvo, and Hino Case Management. The service management tools were all developed by Decisiv for the OEM dealer networks.
“Our lease and rental customers don’t always know it’s SRM Sentinel but they have noticed that we’re being more proactive about tracking their units that are due for service and improving overall PM compliance. They see how it fosters a higher level of engagement and support from our team that has their trucks up and running efficiently with less downtime for service.”
Mike Blimling
Operations & Fleet Maintenance Manager Kriete Leasing & Rental
“SRM Sentinel from Decisiv for managing all scheduled maintenance for every asset in our fleet allows us to work with all of the intervals and services we have so tracking is easier,” Blimling said.“ There’s so much going on that it can get confusing, but Sentinel makes managing complex schedules simple.”
A comprehensive solution to manage assets across all brands
Behind the scenes, Kriete Leasing & Rental is applying SRM Sentinel, Decisiv’s fleet asset management and service provider managed care application, to proactively manage maintenance needs for their assets. The comprehensive solution for preventive maintenance, recalls and campaigns covers assets across all brands in one easy-to-use interface.
For all maintenance, Kriete Leasing & Rental uses ASIST or Hino Case Management to communicate with internal and external service departments. If these systems are working with a provider that is not using a Decisiv-built platform SRM Sentinel opens a service event case in one of the platforms on its own.
With SRM Sentinel, Kriete Leasing & Rental maintenance advisors assigned to assets in different operating territories receive notifications about units that are due for service that can be turned into appointment requests and schedules. Telematics integrations that provide mileage updates and active fault code notifications through SRM Sentinel allow it to respond in real time as well.
SRM Sentinel is also a means of tracking contacts with customers about their vehicles’ upcoming service needs. It is used to log attempts to reach equipment users and set up a time and location for service. The ready-made reference tool features an events screen that lists assets due and contact histories.
“Our lease and rental customers don’t always know it’s SRM Sentinel but they have noticed that we’re being more proactive about tracking their units that are due for service and improving overall PM compliance,” Blimling stated. “They see how it fosters a higher level of engagement and support from our team that has their trucks up and running efficiently with less downtime for service.”
Data and analytics available to Kriete Leasing & Rental through SRM Sentinel are also beneficial. Internally, the operation has built customized dashboards and can track metrics on PM currency and event aging. It also has the ability to produce uptime availability reports for customers.
“More than anything else, having everything in one place in SRM Sentinel is a big win for us,” Blimling stated. “It allows us to offer better customer service and interact more effectively and efficiently with internal and external service providers. SRM Sentinel has both improved our effectiveness and our ability to be proactive.”
Ongoing development efforts are going in the right direction
Kriete Leasing & Rental was an original beta user of SRM Sentinel and was part of a group that spent time with Decisiv helping focus the platform on meeting the needs of fleet users as well as service departments. It continues to take part in that development activity and is keen on new DMS, ELD, eDVIR and other telematics integrations that will be possible.
The company is very optimistic about the direction that Decisiv continues to take and pleased that Decisiv comes back time and again to work with them, Blimling related. Decisiv’s willingness to go in different directions to provide a product that meets its leasing fleet’s needs is seen as what makes SRM technology so valuable as a complete repository of information for all things regarding assets and service, and a highly effective communications tool.
ABOUT KRIETE LEASING & RENTAL
Part of Kriete Group headquartered in Milwaukee, Kriete Leasing & Rental is a dealer-owned leasing company that operates from ten locations across Wisconsin. It provides Mack, Volvo and Hino trucks and tractors, including Class 5 and 6 box and reefer units, and Class 7 and 8 day cab and sleeper tractors. Its lease customers are primarily small to medium size companies with an average of ten to 12 trucks while it also meets seasonal and specialized rental needs for a range of businesses.
Mike Blimling, Operations and Fleet Maintenance Manager at Kriete Leasing & Rental is a 20-year industry veteran with a wide range of experience. Prior to assuming his current role in January of 2020, Mike served as the Corporate Fleet Maintenance Manager for Roadrunner Transportation Systems where he was responsible for a fleet that eventually grew to include 10,000 tractors, trailers, and forklifts. Previously, he was also the Director of Analysis for Enterprise Fleet Services, and headed up logistics, transportation, and distribution for a local newspaper. Mike began his career as a service advisor for Petro Lube where he rose to the position of General Manager, overseeing an operation that provided maintenance and repair services to owner-operators, local and nationwide trucking companies, and a company-owned fleet.
About Decisiv
Decisiv SRM platform revolutionizes how the service supply chain for commercial assets communicates and collaborates. As the industry leader in service management technology, Decisiv is driving unrivaled improvement in asset performance and utilization for manufacturers, service providers and asset owners in the commercial vehicle market.
The SRM platform’s service orchestration capability that harnesses, shares and analyzes connected asset data, and intelligently enables service management, is the key to driving asset uptime and availability. Decisiv is the partner of choice for major commercial vehicle manufacturers, including Volvo, Mack, Hino, Isuzu, Peterbilt, Kenworth and Michelin, as well as their dealers and call centers, service networks and asset owners.
For more information, visit decisiv.com