Week one with a new client
You have won a client with a mixed fleet of cars and vans. They send what they have: a spreadsheet the previous fleet administrator kept, schedules from two leasing companies, a fuel card list and an HR export of employees who drive. The spreadsheet lists vehicles that were returned last year. The leasing schedules include vans that are not on the spreadsheet. The fuel card list has cards linked to registrations nobody recognises. The HR list does not say who drives what.
Your onboarding team starts matching lines by hand, and the go-live date moves.
Why onboarding data is always messy
Nobody at the client has ever had to reconcile these lists, because they were run by different people for different purposes.
- Registrations are typed differently, with spaces, old plates and typos.
- Vehicles have been swapped, returned or replaced without the spreadsheet being updated.
- Drivers are listed by name in one place and employee number in another.
- Contract end dates, mileage allowances and service histories are missing or conflicting.
- Some information exists only in the previous administrator's head.
What a slow onboarding costs
A delayed start to a contract you have just won. Services and checks falling due during the gap. A client whose first impression is being asked the same questions repeatedly. And records that start life with errors which then cause problems for months.
The onboarding import we build
- Every source file is imported as it is, whatever its layout, and each column is mapped once.
- Registrations are cleaned and checked against public vehicle records for make, model, MOT and tax status, which catches typos and old plates.
- Vehicles are matched across sources, and each vehicle gets a record that shows which sources agree and which conflict.
- Drivers are matched between HR, fuel card and vehicle lists, and likely driver-to-vehicle links are proposed for confirmation.
- Gaps and conflicts are listed as specific questions for the client, grouped so their fleet contact can answer them in one sitting through a simple web page.
- Once resolved, the clean fleet is loaded into your fleet system, with the source of each fact recorded.
| Problem | How it is found | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Vehicle on spreadsheet, not on lease schedule | Cross-source match | Asked: returned, owned or missing? |
| Registration typo | Public record check | Corrected or queried |
| Fuel card on unknown vehicle | Card list match | Asked: reassign or cancel? |
| Driver not linked to a vehicle | Driver match | Proposed link for confirmation |
Doing it once, properly
Onboarding is also the moment to capture things that are otherwise lost, such as the previous fleet administrator's notes on which drivers have special arrangements or which vans carry specialist equipment. The question list includes a short section for those, and the answers are stored on the right vehicle or driver record rather than in an email that nobody will find next year.
The same import handles every future client, with only the column mapping changing. Each new onboarding is quicker than the last, because the checks and question lists are already built. And the client's first real contact with your team is a clear, short list of questions rather than a stream of emails.
A clean start for every new client
On the new client's go-live day, your service desk already knows which vans are due a service this month, the licence check scheduler has every driver loaded with the client's rules, and the fuel card register has cancelled the cards that belonged to vehicles returned last year. The client's fleet contact spent one afternoon answering a list of questions, instead of weeks of back-and-forth emails.
Clients go live with a fleet record that has been checked against public data and against each other's lists. Services, licence checks and contract dates are known from day one. The onboarding team spends its time on the questions only the client can answer, not on matching spreadsheets.
Is this your onboarding?
- New clients send fleet data in several spreadsheets that disagree.
- Your team matches vehicles and drivers by hand.
- Go-live dates slip while data is cleaned.
- Clients are asked the same questions more than once.
- Errors from onboarding cause problems months later.