Driver App Lightens Erie Insurance’s Administrative Burden

Taking over the Erie Fleet last year, Tiffany Duran is emerging as a fleet superstar. Tiffany started her career with Erie as a First Notice of Loss Specialist and was soon promoted to the position of Fleet Analyst. Late last year, she took on responsibility for the entire Erie fleet. Even this early in her career, Tiffany has a passion for continual improvement along with the savvy for developing a strategy. 

In all aspects of managing her fleet she combs the data for potential productivity improvements, focuses on those that are viable and vigorously promotes them within her organization. Last year, recognizing the efficiencies that could be realized through committed use of technology, she began an initiative to push all drivers to leverage existing fleet technology tools—and use them to the fullest. She saw that an easy win would be fleet-wide adoption of the mobile app, and she worked to get all stakeholders onboard with the necessary policies to make the initiative a quantifiable success.

With the Driver App, each driver has access to the tools that can manage the most frequent queries, such as locating a shop and getting the directions, new vehicle order status, mileage entries and access to vehicle documents with the capabilities of uploading missing or requested documents. Drivers can also access maintenance history, company policies and recall alerts. For those times when roadside assistance is needed, help is right at the fingertips of the user. The driver app was designed for direct and immediate access to the most frequent requests.

Tiffany has the ability to see a larger picture beyond daily tactical demands and she can be an exacting manager. But she also holds herself to those same high accountability standards. Drivers were expected to use all aspects of the technology, with no “easy outs”. When a driver called for assistance, she directed them to app usage rather than answering the quick questions which often would have been easier for her in the moment. This steadfast approach vastly increased the use of fleet technology.

Tiffany has a practical and realistic approach to fleet. Because of her high standards for accountability, and adamant adherence to her own policies of directing drivers to the technology, she has provided measurable results:

• The technology initiative started in Feb 2021 with 560 users and a 48.4% adoption rate. Today there are 966 users (out of 1,118) with an adoption rate of 86.4%. Her aim is to move that to as close to 100% as possible.
• Since the beginning of 2023, there have been 118,203 functions/actions. This is primarily because of her insistence on drivers using the fleet app.
• Drivers are now comfortable and often very pleased with the quick access to in-app insurance and registration reviews, fuel, trip and mileage entries, and checking order status.

Tiffany has leveraged the use of technology and the mobile assistant to reduce her fleet’s administrative burden by approximately 40% by pushing for technology usage of 86.4%, with the goal of reaching 90% adoption by the end of 2023. The current percentage represents 20,100 actions saved since the beginning of this year, translating to 460.2 employee hours saved for Erie Insurance Group. 

Tiffany is clearly part of the emerging next generation of fleet. She sees the larger strategies and the ways that tech has been changing fleet in the past few years and how that will accelerate into the future. She will not allow her organization to ignore the tools that they already have. We are fortunate in having a younger generation of fleet managers to guide us, and push us, to new standards.