Business fuel expense management platform Fuelman on Tuesday (Nov. 23) debuted a strategic partnership with digital vehicle maintenance and repair marketplace CarAdvise that brings together Fuelman’s managed fuel programs with CarAdvise’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform.
The collaboration will improve price transparency with national large fleet discounts across a digital car care experience. It also gives fleet owners one access point for tracking, scheduling and paying for vehicle maintenance from oil changes, tire rotations, fuel expenses and filter changes to the more than 3,000 services CarAdvise over 3,000 offers.
“Small businesses typically lack dedicated resources to track, manage and prioritize preventative vehicle maintenance and costly repairs that larger companies can afford,” Fuelman Senior Vice President Keagan Russo said in the announcement.
“As a result, businesses are forced to repurpose time that is better spent managing and growing their core business, overpay for maintenance, or worse, have vehicles taken offline by preventable maintenance issues,” he said.
The partnership between Fuelman, a FLEETCOR company, and CarAdvise “automates the most necessary and time-consuming tasks that small business owners face while keeping them focused on building and leading their companies with digitized solutions that are cost and time-efficient,” said Russo.
The combined platform brings together updates from repair and maintenance shops, flexibility and control over fuel expenses, customizable fuel controls, national fleet-level discounts and price transparency on services from CarAdvise’s network and rebates and discounts in the Fuelman network.
“Partnering with Fuelman allows us to better serve the SMB customer base,” Greg Tepas, founder and CEO of CarAdvise, said in the announcement. “Our companies are aligned in our commitment to empowering small business owners by providing necessary resources to make better-informed business decisions that instill confidence and positively impact their bottom lines.”
Cardmembers will be able to access these benefits by January 2022.
Related: From Insurance and Risk to Repair Appointments, the Connected Car Industry Is Growing Up
Meanwhile, a new pilot program by BMW and Bosch will see an automated system within connected cars schedule maintenance appointments for the car as it notices a problem with the vehicle, even as it’s moving.
BMW CarData could enable other third-party services, such as usage-based insurance and charging management of electric cars in the customer’s home garage.
In another recently announced pilot, Locomation and Aon will collaborate on risk management as Locomation develops its autonomous freight transport technology and backend platform for commercial deployment to trucking companies and shippers.