Registration renewal and compliance management — these tasks take time out of your day as a fleet operator, slowing down your operations and introducing possible hiccups into your workday. To make matters worse, adding more vehicles to your fleet simply makes it more challenging to look after the registration status of each one. 

For years, there’s been no viable alternative to simply handling registration renewal in the same way and accepting the lost time as inevitable. One of the most exciting factors around the emergence of digital license plates is that they can finally change this status quo. This technology represents a new and drastically streamlined approach to registration management and renewal.

The Challenges of Fleet Registration and Compliance

It’s worth remembering just how many touchpoints go into a traditional approach to fleet registration renewal. Since this process has been an inevitable part of commercial vehicle operation, it’s possible to take it for granted. Written out, however, the inefficiency becomes clear:

• First, management or the compliance department must reach out to the department of motor vehicles to order tags for all applicable vehicles.
• The DMV then sends those new tags to one location, typically the corporate office.
• The corporate office then dispatches the tags to the operations department.
• Operations works with maintenance in preparation to send the tags to individual drivers.
• The maintenance department then sends the tags to drivers to install on their vehicles.

The forced collaboration between multiple organizations, teams and departments, with physical license plates and tags being sent to new locations, is a time-consuming, multi-step effort.

The more vehicles there are in a fleet, and the more widely they’re spread out, the more complexities and possible points of failure there are in registration renewal, and the longer it can take to get every vehicle updated and compliant. Even if the vehicles are stored centrally, the manual effort of changing the plates takes time out of the day.

The fact that registration renewal is a recurring, scheduled process means that this inefficient set of steps has to play out repeatedly. Every time a fleet vehicle’s registration comes up for renewal, the steps all recur, leading managers, compliance departments and drivers to expend time and effort again.

Some fleets have already turned to third-party licensing and registration services to aid them with the process of renewing registrations. These can assist with the process of applying for new registration documents, plates and stickers in a timely manner. Though these services and solutions are more convenient than in-house operations, they can’t promise a fully seamless and digitized process — digital tags can.

Digital license plates represent a new approach to registration renewal. This much-needed update to the process provides a quick and measurable form of return on investment for fleets that adopt the new technology.

The Digital License Plate Difference for Registration Workflows

Digital license plates are exactly what the name says — they’re legally accepted and compliant license plates, just with digital displays in place of embossed metal. Instead of renewing registration via physical stickers, these digital tags receive wireless updates. This critical difference allows the registration workflow to look very different from the legacy version:

• First, management or compliance personnel click a button to submit their renewals.
• The license plates update themselves to reflect the new registration status.

That simple, one-click bulk registration process changes the calculus for fleet operators when it is time to keep their vehicles compliant and on the road. The savings in time and effort also deliver monetary value. Companies reclaim the productivity that would be lost by sending physical license plates from one location to another.

Without digital license plates, getting through the renewal process meant working out logistics. Either managers would have to send the physical plates to all their drivers in various locations, or they would need to recall every vehicle in the fleet to a central facility and spend time swapping out the tags. With digital workflows, the pressure is off.

Even if a fleet owner scales up operations considerably, the digital workflow remains just as simple. The one-click registration renewal process is the same for 100 vehicles as it is for 10. Converting as soon as possible is a way to future-proof the fleet’s compliance operations, and every registration season that goes by without the physical renewal process represents a savings of time and effort.

Digital Management for Compliance Documents

The registration management value of digital license plates goes beyond the tags themselves. The software systems used to store and track information about vehicles’ registration status carry their own value. The plates serve as a connectivity tool, making it easy to operate a centralized, real-time compliance database.

Having a central repository for that consistently up-to-date data allows operators to stay ahead of compliance deadlines. When there’s a registration renewal coming up for a license plate, that fact is clear. This is a far simpler system than would be available to fleets if they were relying primarily on paper documents or disconnected systems to track their vehicles’ deadlines and statuses.

Even if a fleet is split between some vehicles with digital license plates and others with traditional tags — for instance, if some of the vehicles are registered in states that haven’t yet allowed digital plates — modernized fleet management is still a good idea. Having a single source of truth for vehicle information is a valuable practice for operators of all sizes.

Getting Started with Digital Methods

California, Arizona, Michigan and Texas already allow the use of digital license plates for fleets. If you’re based in one of those states, you can adopt digital compliance and registration methods immediately. The sooner you convert your fleet vehicles to this technology for easier renewals, the more value you can recoup from time and effort savings.

Reviver’s pioneering digital license plate technology, paired with the RFleet fleet management platform, provides the framework for your organization’s next-generation compliance operations. If you’re committed to your current fleet management software, you can still start using the digital tags. By using API integration, the plates can seamlessly integrate with tech platforms other than RFleet.

To make the compliance process truly seamless, Reviver holds State DMV agent status, which means the technology can interact directly with government agencies. The transactions to receive renewal happen directly within the platform, which makes one-click service a reality.

Year after year, renewal and compliance deadlines keep occurring. Handling these requirements with a radically simplified process will show you why digital license plates are the future of fleet management. Get in touch with the Reviver team to get started with this modern approach to commercial vehicle registration.