The traditional fleet management dashboard is set to be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI) as large language models (LLMs) redefine how industry professionals interact with data.

According to FleetCheck, the rise of tools such as ChatGPT and Claude is shifting the sector’s focus from tracking raw data to generating instant, actionable insights that will bring huge efficiency gains to day-to-day operations.

Peter Golding, CEO of the fleet software specialist, elaborated: “We have gone through a period of at least two decades when fleet managers have been deluged with an accumulating amount of data, with a growing emphasis on finding ways to mine that information in ways that create understanding.

“Fleet software user interfaces have become ever more sophisticated as a result, with a range of approaches from the highly complex to our own design, which emphasises key metrics. These can be highly effective, but the new technology offers the opportunity for a rethink.”

Instead of using a dashboard to drill down into data and identify pertinent findings, LLMs allow natural-language questions to be asked and meaningful results generated.

Golding outlined the practical difference this makes: “In a simple example, a fleet manager may today use a custom dashboard within their fleet software to list all their drivers falling short of WLTP miles per gallon figures by more than 25%. This is relatively easy, but not as easy as asking Claude.

“As the insight required becomes deeper and the questions more technical, the use of AI should offer easier access to a wider range of insights, which are only really limited by the fleet manager’s curiosity.

“In particular, there are likely to be benefits where different functions within a company – not just the fleet but perhaps finance and human resources, too – want to use the information available for different purposes.”

Over time, fleet managers will likely use familiar LLMs as the front end for their operations, making the underlying fleet software effectively invisible in the background, he added.

“This is one direction that AI could take for fleets that has obvious benefits, and we are examining ways to make this happen as seamlessly as possible.”