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Having grown up around cranes, Jeff Curran is well and truly a part of the fabric of the crane, rigging and heavy lift industry in the United States.
His father, John, and mother, Jacquelyn, started the JJ Curran Crane Company in 1950 and the family’s commitment to each other and the broader crane industry is the reason JJ Curran Crane company has been a thriving business in Detroit for over 70 years.
In the early 1990s Jeff began thinking about crane systems technology and was curious to find ways of modernising the crane and fleet industry. Shortly after that in 1993, Fleet Cost & Care was born.
When he talks about the inception of the now deeply influential Fleet Cost & Care business, a venture in which he takes a lot of pride, Jeff allows himself a broad smile.
“I was a dreamer,” he says.
“We are really proud of what we’ve become as a fleet software management company and we can’t say enough about our customers and how loyal they have been to us. They are deeply passionate about the industry, too, which aligns to what we are about as a brand in the crane industry,” says Jeff.
Jeff lauds the connection and work ethic of his tight-knit family, which helped him mature into a leader as a young man. However, a pep-talk with his father went a long way in helping Jeff choose his direction.
“I was born into a family that exposed me to good education, we played a lot of sports, we didn’t travel much; We were a family that enjoyed the Midwest US and occasional trips to Florida, but the family stayed close to the business,” says Jeff.
“My Dad had a tremendous work ethic, and he was a great role model for me in that aspect.”
Jeff graduated at age 22 with a bachelor’s in business administration from Bowling Green State University, Ohio. He then had a meaningful conversation with his father, John.
“At the time, I wasn’t sure I was going to go in the family business, but my dad gave me a little pep talk and asked me to join,” Jeff says.
“Once I knew Dad was right behind me and he backed me in, I gave it a lot of consideration and chose to join the JJ Curran Crane business.”
The Vision
Fleet Cost & Care is already an incredibly strong player in the crane and heavy lift fleet management software field, as the company has helped hundreds of its customers in areas of standalone system elimination, process standardisation and profit generation for over 30 years.
“We have had quite a big head start, as I was keen to bring my IT knowledge and skills to the business and create something special,” says Jeff.
“We identified the challenges of paper and physical documentation and after speaking with customers for a long time about these industry hurdles, we’ve now committed to digital transformation.” Digital transformation is about utilising new technologies, new tools and new best practices to achieve greater outcomes. It applies to all levels of a company – from a high-level perspective (C-suite, managers) to the operations team – including dispatch, crane operators and service technicians.
Fleet Cost & Care has customers all over North America, the Caribbean, Australia and New Zealand.
Jeff says a part of Fleet Cost & Care’s vision is to move with, leverage off and therefore benefit from advanced systems such as application programming interface (API) technologies.
API can be understood as an automated system whereby different software entities are able to communicate with each other by defining a set of rules.
For example, Fleet Cost & Care’s API system allows customers to track crane GPS data, fuel card and digital work order information together simultaneously. Jeff wants Fleet Cost & Care to continue its exploration phase in this area.
“We want to grow our company with the help of all kinds of other logistical fleet management technologies that relate well to us,” he explains.
“The API ability within Fleet Cost & Care’s software is a very strong and powerful operational functionality. Our API informatics could be anti-fraud oriented, security-oriented or it could enhance efficiency relating to logistics, GPS – anything and everything that fits into that digital world,” Jeff adds.
Helping Freo Group go to the Next Level
Interim Chief Operating Officer Tony Durey plays a major role in one of Australia’s biggest crane and heavy lifting service providers. Freo Group has 21 branches across Australia and has over 497 modern crane units, ranging from 3 tonnes to 800 tonnes in lifting capacity.
Freo Group and Fleet Cost & Care entered a partnership in 2019 which saw the Fleet Cost & Care product rolled out across all Freo branches.
The process included the inclusion of 2,000 tablets – one for each staff member.
Tony led the project and says the process first appeared to be an extremely large task. However, Freo’s relationship with Fleet Cost & Care ensured everything ran as smoothly as possible – despite a few teething problems in teaching staff how to use the tablets.
“There will always be challenges when making major change to systems and processes, but the entire FCC team provided us with a great software and effective roll-out measures to mitigate the stress and strain in the process,” explains Tony.
Tony says Fleet Cost & Care’s product was brought into Freo Group to enable staff to do their jobs more effectively, saving them from the old-fashioned and arduous task of pen to paper timesheets and general reporting.
“At the time, FCC appeared as the only end-to-end paperless process providers, so I met with Jeff and his team and then we put a business case forward for a pilot fleet,” he says.
“We wanted to ensure we free our staff up from the traditional reporting methods, which honestly, takes time, so now with this new software, our staff have gained further efficiency and time spent performing their roles.”
Tony told the story of a staff member that was not as open-minded initially about the Fleet Cost & Care product. The staff member was not keen on the change, but soon realised the software would be a great help to herself and her team.
“She wasn’t a fan initially, but the next week she came back to us and had a brand- new perspective on the product; she said the product was awesome,” says Tony.
NexGen and Atom
NexGen and Atom are the primary software solutions of Fleet Cost & Care featuring some of the latest fleet management technology.
Both impressive systems are designed to enhance the customers’ reporting output, fleet database, field services, production line and revenue within the wider Fleet Cost & Care framework.
Jeff says the Atom and NexGen features help maintain an “assembly line” to support efficiency.
“I call it an assembly line, which allows you to pay your employees, pay your vendors and buy goods and materials, service the equipment, all at the same time, while keeping the job going,” says Jeff.
NexGen is designed by fleet owners to help heavy equipment rental companies operate more efficiently.
In NexGen, customers can quote and schedule jobs, add or remove equipment, view daily, weekly, or monthly schedules, track service schedules, manage parts inventory and perform all of the back office administrative tasks required by its businesses.
Overall, NexGen helps fleet and operations managers improve data accuracy, increases safety and bolsters revenue.
The Atom feature offers a variety of different features that help complement NextGen.
Atom is a comprehensive mobile fleet management app that allows fleet owners to manage operations from a tablet or smartphone. Dispatchers, sales managers, operators and service managers use Atom to create quotes and work orders, assign work to mechanics, enter labour, capture signatures on a job site, perform safety checklists and check in on the status of jobs for any given time period.
Atom proves a point of difference in the automated fleet operations space, as the software increases sales per employee and profit margins, while reducing operating costs and expenses.
Both systems help create a versatile fleet management toolbox for all customers in a myriad of Fleet Cost & Care software options, says Jeff. “There’s a strong database in there (NexGen and Atom), in which security is air-tight and there is lots of functionality, this is the direction the industry will go in,” he says.
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