Q&A: The Dos And Don'ts Of Deploying Fleet Management

By Sarah Howland, Editor In Chief, Field Technologies magazine

Editor In Chief Sarah Howland talks one-on-one with Michael Sticklen of Service Experts Heating & Air Conditioning for tips on fleet management success.

Michael Sticklen is the senior manager of operations for Service Experts Heating & Air Conditioning, North America’s largest HVAC service company. In his role, Sticklen manages more than 1,300 service technicians in 110 locations across the United States and Canada. In December of 2011, we featured Service Experts on the cover of our magazine — the company had just deployed a Web-based fleet management solution from SageQuest, as well as a field service management solution from ServiceMax utilizing Motorola MC65s, and was on track to save more than $780,000 per year in fuel costs as a result.

Since we’ve already talked with Sticklen about the benefits of Service Experts’ deployment (if you haven’t read the article, you can at www.fieldtechnologiesonline.com/ go/serviceexperts), I wanted to focus our conversation more on some of the considerations, cautions, and advice that Sticklen gained from the experience that didn’t make it into the cover story. Here, he shares his thoughts on how fleet management can offer more than you may initially think, why rugged handhelds are essential, and what to avoid as you’re deploying a fleet management solution.