Fleet management and how Interconnectivity RULES

CECILE: 0:00

Companies propose company cars in the this is fiscally interesting. Most of other companies in Belgium are doing leasing contracts for their company cars. This is something we are not going to do in Belgium. We are buying all the cars. The fleet app is integrated with accounting, so when the accounting team is receiving an invoice, they can link it to the vehicle to a car. And then this is really helping us to track the cost of one car. It's even more powerful if you integrate it with other apps like the HR app, like document app, like accounting app. From the form view of the car, you have another smart button with the services where we enter all the accidents. We can also join pictures of the damage and any paper document from the insurance, so we can have a clear view of all the accidents. The problem is that all the employees are not ready to take the new step of having a full electric car. It's really important for us to have this thermic park that we have at Odoo, and that maybe other companies don't have.

AMY: 1:18

Welcome everyone to another episode of I'm Amy Caroline, your host, and today we're diving into the world of fleet management. And we'll be focusing on, of course, Odoo. But not only the application, but how Odoo Belgium uses the fleet app. Joining us today is Cecile Debois, fleet manager at Odoo Belgium. Cecile will be shedding light on how Odoo innovative fleet app revolutionizes the management of company vehicles. From handling employee requests to tracking documentation and everything in between, we'll uncover the intricacies of fleet management with Odoo. So, without further ado, let's dive in and explore the fascinating realm of Odoo fleet management with Cecile. Hello, Cecile. Welcome. Thank you for joining me.

CECILE: 2:01

Hello. Thank you for having me.

AMY: 2:03

We have a lot to discuss in your Is going to be super interesting here. But before we start digging into what you do, specifically your daily tasks, can you just give us a small overview, a glimpse of Odoo fleet? And first, let's talk about Odoo fleet itself. Just to get give our listeners an idea of how big we are, how big this is, and what you have to manage. And then we'll dig a bit more into Odoo itself.

CECILE: 2:30

Okay, maybe I should start with Belgium, because I think this is very specific to Belgium and Luxembourg. Maybe. But actually this is very common in Belgium and Luxembourg to have company cars in the salary package of employees. Uh, so companies propose company cars in the salary package of employees because this is fiscally interesting. So at Odoo in Belgium, we have around 1000 cars. And then my role is to be a fleet manager. So the job consists in managing all the cars, from building the catalogue to ordering cars, to planning the maintenance of the cars, to tracking cost of the cars and many other things.

AMY: 3:23

So to give our listeners just a visual fleet app, can you describe it a little bit?

CECILE: 3:29

Yeah. So the fleet app is looking like You have the Kanban view with the columns that you can name the way you want. So we decided to name the first one new requests. This is where we receive the new requests from employees. Then we have a column with the cars that are ordered, another one with the cars that are used, and the last one with the replacement replacement cars. So we have a view of all the cars very easily and all the actions that need to be taken.

AMY: 4:03

So there's a lot of information to How does Odoo help facilitate that for you?

CECILE: 4:10

Actually, it's starting from building and models in the fleet application. And then the fleet application is also linked with the salary configurator. So the cars available are visible in the configurator. So a candidate can select a car. And then after signing his contract it's directly updated in the fleet application. So we see a new request from the candidate. And then we know that we have to take an action and then order the car by example. And we also receive a notification by email saying that we have to allocate a new car to someone.

AMY: 4:52

This is interesting because of course is relevant for the employees. They see it where it's relevant. So here in this case, as you said on the salary configurator, and then they will have the dropdown. And it's really cool that those are integrated. Of course when it comes to cars, there's more than just the salary configurator employees making a request for a car and you saying what's available or not. Um, but cars have a value and you have to report this with accounting. Can you tell me a little bit how the fleet app is integrated with the accounting application?

CECILE: 5:26

Yeah, exactly. The fleet app is integrated with accounting. So when the accounting team is receiving an invoice, they can link it to the vehicle to a car. And then this is really helping us to track the cost of one car. Because from the form view of one car, we can we have a smart button with the list of all the invoices of this car. So it's allowing us to make a follow up of the cost of each car, and also for the accounting team to know what are the cost of the cars for the reporting.

AMY: 6:04

And this brings up a good point as lot of invoices or bills or things that related to the car. But considering that employees can make mistakes as well and they might have accidents or get tickets or, you know, issues with their life, whatever can happen, that's a lot of information you have to keep track of, especially for insurance purposes. So how do you manage this?

CECILE: 6:27

Yeah, again, from the form view of the with the services where we enter all the accident of the car. And then we have to add the invoice and the cost. But we can also join pictures of the damage and any paper document from the insurance. So we can have a clear view of all the accident and what action needs to be taken. Thanks to the smart button going to the service part of the fleet.

AMY: 6:57

So in the fleet application, you with really access all these integrated apps directly from there. So you don't have to jump from app to app. You can see it. From the form view. And for all of the related documents that you have with an employee, how or car, how do you organize that and link everything?

CECILE: 7:16

So we use the document app to store document to a specific car. So when you need to find one document, no need to look after it. In the document application. We just need to go in the fleet app on the car. And then we have access to all the document of the car.

AMY: 7:37

Are you able to easily change what's So I guess if it's a insurance paper something, it will always be linked to the one car. But let's imagine who's driving the car. It's not always the same employee I would suppose.

CECILE: 7:51

Yeah, we also have a smart button for You have to know that in Belgium each employee has the opportunity to change car every year. So or every two years if it's a new car. But it means that we have a lot of driver change, and it's very important to us to keep track, keep track of the history of the driver. And then we have a smart button with the history of the driver with a started and an end date. And we can also join pictures and documents with a recap of all the damage when you receive a car. So when you return it back after a certain time, you. We just need to compare the document we did at the reception of the car with the the one when you return the car.

AMY: 8:41

So then you just need to decide how Oh no, we didn't see that scratch on the picture. Um, and, and so in regards to maintenance, how do you keep track of when a car needs to go to the technical control, for example, are you managing this through fleet. Do you put that on the employee?

CECILE: 9:03

Yeah, we are managing it through the application. So we can set an activity for the next technical contract that needs to be done in the next few months or next year. We set it maybe for one month before the end date so we can organize it on time.

AMY: 9:23

Oh, so It's really honestly, with thousand cars is a lot. And through Odoo it sounds like everything is very streamlined, easy to use, makes your job much easier. Yeah. And you've been at Odoo now. For how many years have you been managing Odoo fleet?

CECILE: 9:39

Uh oh, I'm at Odoo since almost 17 I'm doing fleet exclusively from 2018.

AMY: 9:48

So you've seen, you've seen how Odoo evolved over time. And just out of curiosity for our users as well, when you receive feedback, I suppose a lot of the feedback for our developers comes from you directly, since you really are in the application all the time. Yeah. Do you get a lot of feedback as well from the employees who are working with fleet to how does that work?

CECILE: 10:14

Yeah, we are giving a lot of feedback our need is specific to Odoo or if it's something that could benefit to other business. And then sometimes it's not the case. So they don't they don't they don't do anything with my feedback. But yeah, on our side the objective is also to improve constantly. So we receive feedback from employees and sometimes we try to improve things, uh, if we can do it.

AMY: 10:48

Because that's what's interesting as fleet application. It's it's for anyone using Odoo for anyone who needs to manage fleet. And here we do have some first hand experience since Odoo itself has such a large fleet of, of cars. Um, but in any case, we don't want to customize fleet just for our one use case. We want to do something global for all of our users to be able to use that. So as you just said now, your feedback isn't necessarily taken into account if it's a really specific for Belgium Odoo Belgium thing.

CECILE: 11:22

Yeah. But also do has a really internally, as most of other companies in Belgium are doing leasing contract for their company cars. This is something we are not doing at Odoo in Belgium. We are buying all the cars and we are keeping keeping them a lot of time.

AMY: 11:44

Uh, why why do we do that? What is the reasoning for this strategy?

CECILE: 11:47

This is a policy that that has been And I think this is a good decision because today it's allowing us to. Reply every employees need regarding to the related to the company car. So one employee who wants a brand new car can have it, but someone who doesn't have a lot of budget to spend in a car can also choose to take an older one, and then he will have a car also. So the objective is to attract new talent, to have a an attractive catalogue, to propose to any new candidate or any people already working at Odoo. But also we have a number of older cars that can also interest people internally because they don't have budget enough to take a new one. And this is really specific to Odoo in Belgium because other companies don't do that now.

AMY: 12:48

And I know as well, being someone who option to potentially buy your own car from the company at the end of the day, I absolutely adore my car, so if I ever need it, maybe that's something I'll consider as well. Um, but in Belgium. So again, you bring up a case that Belgium itself is really specific and that there's some physical advantages to offering a company car. They change the regulations quite often. Can you tell us a little bit about what has changed, specifically in Belgium, and how Odoo is able. To help you adapt?

CECILE: 13:22

So from July last year, there's a new electric cars. And then we had to anticipate this change and to rework or catalog internal catalog to remove all the thermic cars and to build a new catalog, add new brands, new model. So it was quite a lot of work. But again, in Odoo it's very simple because you do it in a few clicks. But yeah, the problem is that all the employees are not ready to take the new step of having a full electric car. So that's why I was saying before that it's really important for us to have this thermic park that we have at Odoo, and that maybe other companies don't have, because someone who don't want to drive an electric car can still choose the option to take a thermic one, which is already existing in the fleet.

AMY: 14:23

Yeah, we keep it, the options really It's nice that you consider all of the different possibilities for the employees. And of course, when we talk about fleet, our minds go directly to cars. But that's not the only thing you manage.

CECILE: 14:37

We also decided to allow employees to salary package to ease them the charging of their cars at home them. And this is something that we launched a few months ago, and I think people are very happy to be able to do that, because they would have to pay it by themselves if we didn't propose that. So in our case, they can add it in their package. So it's really interesting for them to do that.

AMY: 15:07

Absolutely, absolutely. And similarly we also offer company bikes as well. And this is configured the same way as a car in the fleet application. Yeah.

CECILE: 15:16

We we have to adapt to the new ways of And then a few months ago we launched the bike plan, which is allowing employees to select a bike, the bike. They want to add it in their package.

AMY: 15:27

Super smooth, super easy. And all of this is managed through fleet through the integrated applications. You do everything in Odoo.

CECILE: 15:33

Yeah, exactly. We just change create a new car model. This is not a car, this is a bike or a charging point, but it's working the same way. Then the car, the logic.

AMY: 15:45

Is the same, just it's flexible. You're just molded Odoo to the use case.

CECILE: 15:50

Yeah. And we are trying to to work were to try in studio to make it work or to ask for a full development. But sometimes we try to find workarounds to be able to, for it to be able to work. So uh, yeah, sometimes we do that and it's working very well. So this is the most important.

AMY: 16:13

See listeners, you heard it here Sometimes you just have to be creative with it. But that's also the beauty of Odoo as we try to fit, uh, many use cases and many different businesses and industries, there are many ways to manage your specific use case. As long as you have think outside the box a little bit.

CECILE: 16:33

Yeah, yeah. That's why that's what, uh, I try to advise to, uh, every people I meet, uh, in my job is to always try to think out of the box because it's working.

AMY: 16:46

Absolutely. Um, so for a company that want to get organized, perhaps they don't have a software yet, or it's just becoming a bit too. Big for them to handle outside of a software. Where do you recommend that they get started?

CECILE: 17:01

Whether we say is that using the fleet it's even more powerful if you integrate it with other apps like the HR, apps like document app, like in accounting app. Yeah, it will be even more powerful for companies using the all the apps rather than the fleet alone. It's already great, but it's the yeah, it's even more powerful to have all these ones rather than the only one.

AMY: 17:34

Right. So don't just look, okay. There are company. We have this van that we're using to do our tasks. You can think, okay, we have this van for field service. We also need to keep track of the miles that goes on this van. Okay. So maybe we also need documents, as you said, to put the license of the guy who's going to be driving the car.

CECILE: 17:55

Uh, what? Something I didn't explain. Also, the fact that we have a history of all the drivers, it can be useful also when we receive parking tickets. Because it's happening. Of course. Actually, the most important to retain is that any information gets lost. Everything is in Odoo. And this is maybe something the most important when you have to manage 1000 car.

AMY: 18:23

So you keep a record, keep track and So it's very easy for you as a fleet manager to. Hold everyone accountable for paying their tickets. It's never happened to me. No, that's really great. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me. Do you have any last tips or any last things that you would like to share with our listeners?

CECILE: 18:47

Yeah, again, I would advise people to start something new, or when they have to face a change. Yeah, don't hesitate to try something new. And it's work.

AMY: 19:01

Yeah, absolutely. And we like to hear your feedback and suggestions as well. All right. Well thank you so much.

CECILE: 19:07

Thank you.

AMY: 19:08

I hope you found this episode Stay tuned for more discussions on business solutions and innovations here on planet Odoo. And until next time, good afternoon, good evening and good night.