TLDR: Fleet operations are generating more data than ever before, but almost none of it is being used to make better decisions. The problem isn't the data itself. It's how (and whether) people can actually get to it. Until that changes, most fleets are leaving massive value on the table.
Here's something that comes up in almost every conversation I have with fleet operators: they know their data could be doing more for them. They just can't figure out how to make it happen.
And it's not because they're behind the curve. Most of these teams are running modern telematics, using an FMC or fleet management platform, tracking fuel cards, processing toll data, managing maintenance through some kind of system. The data exists. There's actually a ton of it.
The problem is that it's all in different places. And getting it out, combining it, and turning it into something useful takes more time and effort than most teams can justify on a Tuesday afternoon when they've got 15 other things going on.
The 10% problem
When I say most fleets are only using 10% of their data, I don't mean 90% of it is bad or useless. I mean 90% of it never gets looked at by the people who could actually do something with it.
Think about it this way. Your telematics provider gives you a portal with dashboards. Your FMC gives you another portal with different dashboards. Your fuel card company has its own reporting. Tolling, same thing. Maybe you've got maintenance data in a separate system, or worse, in spreadsheets that someone updates manually.
Each of those systems has useful information. But they don't talk to each other. And the person making decisions about your fleet operation, whether that's a fleet manager, a VP of operations, or a CFO reviewing costs, doesn't have time to log into five different portals and mentally stitch together what's happening.
So what actually gets used? Whatever's easiest to access. Usually that's one or two reports from your primary system, maybe a monthly spreadsheet someone puts together by hand. The rest just sits there.
Why this matters more now than ever
Fleet operations are under more pressure than they've been in years. Costs are up. Margins are tight. Leadership wants answers faster. And the fleets that are going to come out ahead aren't the ones spending the most on technology. They're the ones getting the most out of what they already have.
That's the frustrating part. The data to make better decisions is already there. It's already being generated every single day. The gap isn't a data problem. It's an access problem.
When a fleet manager has to wait three days for an analyst to pull a report, or spend an hour in Excel trying to figure out which locations are driving up maintenance costs, that's not a technology failure. That's a workflow failure. The information exists. The path to get to it is just way too long.
Where the breakdown happens
In our experience working with fleet operations of every size, the breakdown usually happens in one of three places.
The data lives in too many systems. This is the most common one. You've got five, six, seven different platforms generating data, and none of them are connected. Each one gives you a slice of the picture, but nobody has the full view. The people who need to make cross-functional decisions (how does maintenance spending relate to vehicle utilization? how do repair costs compare across regions when you factor in revenue?) can't get those answers without a major manual effort.
The people making decisions aren't the ones with access. This is the one that kills me. In a lot of organizations, the people closest to the data (analysts, IT, operations coordinators) aren't the ones who need to act on it. And the people who need to act on it (directors, VPs, C-suite) are waiting in line for someone else to pull the numbers for them. By the time the report lands on their desk, the window to act on it might have already closed.
Reporting is reactive, not proactive. Most fleet reporting happens on a set schedule. Monthly reviews. Quarterly business reviews. Annual benchmarking. That's fine for big-picture trends, but it means nobody's catching the stuff that's happening right now. A spike in repeat repairs at one location. A vendor charging 30% more than everyone else. PM compliance dropping off a cliff in one region. By the time it shows up in a monthly report, you've already lost money.
What actually fixes this
Here's where I'll be honest about what we're building at Proaction and why.
We built Proaction Explore because we kept hearing the same thing from fleet operators: "I have all this data. I just can't do anything with it." These are smart people running real operations. They don't need more dashboards from more vendors. They need a way to ask questions about their own data and get answers fast, without going through a middleman.
That's what Proaction Explore does. You upload your fleet data, whether it's one spreadsheet or ten different exports from ten different systems, and you ask questions in plain English. "What's my total maintenance spend by location?" "Which vehicles have the highest cost per mile?" "Show me PM compliance trends over the last six months." And you get real, interactive dashboards back in seconds.
It's not a replacement for your existing systems. It's the layer that sits on top of all of them and actually makes the data useful to the people who need it.
But Proaction Explore is just one piece of a bigger picture. The real goal is to build a platform where your entire fleet operation, every workflow, every process, every data source, works together instead of in silos. Where the technology doesn't just report on what happened, it helps you figure out what to do next. We're not there yet, but we're building toward it every single day.
Start with what you have
If you're reading this and thinking "yeah, that's us," here's the good news: you don't need to rip out your existing tech stack to start getting more value from your data. You don't need to hire an analyst or buy a BI tool or sign up for a six-month implementation project.
Start with the data you already have. The spreadsheets sitting in your downloads folder. The CSV exports from your FMC. The repair order history you've been meaning to do something with.
Upload it to Proaction Explore, ask it a question, and see what comes back. It's free to start and every user gets $750 in AI credits. That's enough to run months of analysis without spending a dime.
The data is already there. It's been there. The only question is whether you're going to keep ignoring 90% of it or start putting it to work.
