Simplify Your Sourcing with Nexpart
What Every Fleet Manager Should Know About Streamlining Parts Sourcing
In today’s unpredictable economic environment marked by tariffs, regulatory shifts and global supply chain disruptions, fleet managers face mounting pressure to keep operations efficient and vehicles on a road. Jake Olsen from WHI Solutions shares practical strategies to help fleet managers streamline their workflows, reduce operational drag, and cut costs.
Tips That Help Fleet Managers Simplify Their Supply Chain
- Economic pressures are unavoidable. To stay competitive, fleet managers must focus inward, improving what’s within their control. According to Olsen, the key lies in:
- Identifying inefficiencies: Audit your internal process to pinpoint where time and resources are being wasted
- Building operational resilience: Implement practices that offset external cost pressures
- Focusing on controllable variables: Rather than reacting to global shifts, prioritize internal changes that improve your team’s agility.
Technology Tools To Save Time And Labor
Fleet teams often lack the bandwidth to research and adopt new tools. Olsen stresses the importance of implementing integrated e-commerce and procurement technologies that eliminate low-value tasks. Key recommendations include:
Centralized vendor management: Tools that bring multiple vendors into a single portal will save hours each week by reducing manual sourcing and order placement tasks.
Procurement system integrations: Building direct bridges from fleet management platforms to suppliers like WHI’s Nexpart allows for seamless part ordering directly from work order, eliminating the need to manually key in part numbers or place phone orders.
Focus on automation where it counts: Freeing up even two or three hours per week for each buyer or technician scales quickly across teams, directly impacting productivity and profitability.
As Jake Olsen puts it: “If it’s free and makes your life easier, why wouldn’t you do it?”
The Critical Importance of Finding The Right Part, Fast
When vehicles are sidelined, time is money. Olsen underscores that accurate, efficient parts sourcing isn’t just about convenience, it’s about profitability strategy:
Real-time inventory visibility: WHI’s systems ensure that fleet managers see live data from distributors, avoiding errors tied to outdated inventory records
Vehicle-specific accuracy: Using systems that match parts to vehicle IDs, rather than relying on generalized catalogs, reduces ordering errors and returns.
One-stop sourcing: Centrialized portals display all local sellers, highlighting existing accounts and opening access to new vendors, all from a single interface.
For fleet managers juggling multiple vendors and constant operational pressures, tools like Nexpart and other integrated solutions from WHI are game-changers. We believe that by simplifying procurement, streamlining sourcing, and automating time-intensive tasks, these technologies help businesses stay agile, no matter what the global market throws their way.
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TRANSCRIPT BASED ON THIS VIDEO
Hello NAFA. I’m Carla Caligeras with Fleet Solutions Magazine and we managed to grab a thought leader from our community, Jake Olsen of WHI Solutions. Jake, thanks for being here with us. Uh Jake’s going to give us some really cool tips. There’s a lot of things going on in supply chain tariffs, trade, international trade, changing regulations.
How can fleet managers simplify their supply chain?
Yeah, if you think about just economies in general, you’re going to have times where it’s lean, uh, where there are tariffs or there’s something going on. And that’s when you need to really look at your internal operation and find out what you’re doing. How can I build my efficiencies better so that I can combat what’s coming at me from a macro level, right? Is coming out from the outside world is trying to push me down and hurt the way I run my shop. So I need to look at what can I do that I can control that I can actually implement so that I can cut something out of what I’m doing so that I can afford to take care of this thing that now the world or the economy has placed on me.
Fleet managers have a lot on their plates, right? They’re looking for ways to bring in new efficiencies. Sometimes they don’t even have the opportunity to research the tools and technologies that are available for them, right? uh as someone who is an expert in in technology um and e-commerce, what is what are some of the tools that fleet managers can use to to improve their workflow? In our world, what we try our best to do um is give the the fleet manager the ability to save time and labor, right? So, we want to take away those those low hanging jobs that are that are just don’t require someone, right? If it’s a very difficult repair that we’ve got and I need that expertise, then I’m going to call the store. But if I don’t need that, I really don’t want to have to spend 15 minutes talking to someone because I’ve got a lot of stuff to do. Being able to bring all of your uh vendors into one space in the in the purchasing level, that’s where we can probably carve out a half hour a day from that resource. That labor resource just cost you X amount of dollars. if we could give you two and a half hours back of that person’s week, you know, and then times up by the four or five, you know, different buying agents that we have, it really is a big time waste. And so um not just that also being able to present things that make their life easier like we uh we’re working with a lot of the fleet procurement systems to build bridges from their from their management systems into next part as we do in the aftermarket with shop systems so that they can easily in the work order just click a button that goes accesses the parts and brings it back to the repair order without them having to go in and key stuff into different places or you know pick up the phone and be keying stuff in as they’re going. Like it’s free so there’s really no reason not to do it. And I get that a lot from a lot of these guys. They’re like, “Why don’t I do this?” I’m like, “Cuz you didn’t know about it.” Cuz you didn’t know about it. Yeah. Exactly. So, uh, how important is it about, you know, what what are some of the tips and and things that you can share about finding the right part? And how important is finding the right part quickly to this whole process of getting the asset back on the road? Well, and not that trying to reduce return time as well, right? being able to get the shop or the fleet manager to the specific part that they’re looking for and knowing that it fits the vehicle because they input information enough to give us that. It’s it’s about the fitment for us. It’s everything that we do is is vehicle ID versus part ID. In the aftermarket, right, if you’re a repair shop, you know, Next Part is very reliable because of this real-time integration that we have with the distributor groups. We don’t go and send look at refreshed inventories. were literally right there in their system pulling what they had back on the shelf. So accuracy and and and knowing that the the the quantity accuracy as well part data actually those two things together make it so that I can make that purchase and move on to think about it again. It will drastically reduce any returns as well which that’s even worse. So, you put in your own information of the the fleet, you know, if you’re I don’t know, Pinnacle or whatever, you know, you put in Pinnacle Assets and you put in your information and then it’s going to pop up a screen that’ll show you everybody around you that sells and you’ll probably already have accounts with a lot of those those different sellers. So, um immediately you can start reaching out to them through our web form that’s that you see. Sort of a one-stop portal then is basically what it is. It literally is because you can see everybody that’s around you. I’ve got accounts with these guys. Oh, I’d like an account with this guy. Oh, hey, there’s 1800 radiator. there’s these different pieces that we have that you need in that and you you know I don’t go to 1800 radiator a lot but when I do I know exactly what I’m looking for right so it’s nice if they’re already there you know things like that all right Jake thank you so much for being with us today thank you so much for joining us and we’ll see you next time thanks