EntarusTM Enterprise

EntarusTM Enterprise is our flagship product and is intended for larger organizations with established IT departments.  It takes advantage of many of the primary technologies in the J2EE platform.  These technologies offer faster solution delivery time to market, freedom of choice, and simplified connectivity.  First Degree Solutions is able to reduce your Total‑Cost‑of‑Ownership (TCO) and simultaneously helping you to avoid a single‑source for supporting software.

Features

Unit

A unit is a uniquely identified asset that you want to manage.  The general characteristic of a unit is an item that you want to record usage and repair history.  In addition, a unit may have a preventive maintenance schedule.  While the historical focus of fleet management is on vehicles, a unit may include nontraditional items such as lawn mowers and leaf blowers.

Preventive Maintenance and Repair History

Automated Preventive Maintenance (PM) scheduling and tracking are key components to any fleet management solution.  EntarusTM Enterprise enables you define a PM classification, a grouping of units that follow the same schedule of preventive maintenance tasks.  You define a task to have a maintenance interval that is a specified amount of usage or number of days.  All units assigned to a PM classification will have a forecast of PM tasks based on the schedule and its unique usage pattern.

EntarusTM Enterprise records maintenance and repair history as work orders.  Aside from the details of work performed and the parts used, the work order contains information as to the original intent of the work order.  Using the unit's normal hours of operation, EntarusTM Enterprise is able to compute the unit's downtime, the amount of time that it was unavailable for use.

Organization

This component allows you to record information about your organization.  Small fleet operators will typically have a single department, where they will specify the normal hours of operations, details about work order numbering, and an optional email address for receiving EntarusTM Enterprise alert messages.  The normal hours of operation are used as the default values for adding a unit to the system.

Larger fleet operators will have multiple departments.  EntarusTM Enterprise allows you to describe your department hierarchy regardless of the number of levels.  Each department will have its own normal hours of operations, work order numbering scheme, and an optional alert email address.  EntarusTM Enterprise will use the department hierarchy when determining the units and employees that a user can view and modify.

Employee

This component allows you to record basic information about your employees.  These employees will appear as possible unit operators or repair personnel for the departments to which they belong.  In addition, the employee component is where you define the EntarusTM Enterprise users and their access.

VMRS 2000TM Ready

VMRS (vehicle maintenance reporting standards) 2000TM allows fleets to improve the consistency and quality of their maintenance data.  It provides a foundation for fleets to conduct internal trend analysis and benchmark their maintenance operation with other fleets utilizing VMRS.  VMRS establishes a universal reporting convention for industries that utilize all types of cars, trucks, and other equipment as well as standardizes the data records and reports related to the activities associated with their unique maintenance operation.

Future Directions

Expanded Component Suite

Typically, as the size of the fleet grows, the fleet operator performs more tasks in‑house.  An effective fleet management solution needs to allow the fleet operator control over those areas.  As a component‑based solution, EntarusTM Enterprise will be enhanced to meet these needs.  As components are added, the clients will be able to select the ones that they want to use.  Below is a sample list of future components.

  • Parts Inventory
  • Tire Tracking
  • Employee Management
  • Enhanced Reporting

Expanded User Interface Options

The rise of the Internet and the web browser has forced user‑interface development and the overall user experience to take a step backwards.  Browser‑based applications provide access to a larger audience at a lower cost to the user.  Yet, they deny the user the experience that a full‑fledged desktop application can provide.  The browser‑based application is to a certain extent a glorified version of the dumb terminal of days gone by.  We will create a rich client interface to EntarusTM Enterprise, which will provide our clients with an alternate way to access the application.  Users of the rich client interface will have the same access to the data as the browser user.  A client will be able to choose which interface to use for each of their users.

Many of us use mobile devices, such as a cellular phone and/or a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant), in our daily lives.  The architecture of EntarusTM Enterprise enables us to provide access using one of these devices.  With this interface, fleet managers will have key information at their fingertips.

Data Exchange with Other Systems

With larger fleet operations, the fleet management software does not exist within a silo.  Fleet information needs to be exchanged with other systems.  Within an organization, accounting systems need financial information and payroll systems require employee timecard information.  Outside of an organization, fleet fuel card vendors provide fleet managers with valuable fueling information.  The design of EntarusTM Enterprise supports the exchange of information using the state‑of‑art web services.