The automotive industry is buzzing with a variety of rapidly evolving technologies – autonomy, EVs, AI – but telematics, connected vehicles, and powerful analytics continue to be the fuel that drives improvement for most fleet operators. This technology, and the insight it provides, empowers you to make better, data-driven decisions that enhance productivity and reduce your total cost of ownership.
However, many fleet operators often struggle to maximize the impact of their telematics investment. Whether it is determining which fleet challenges to address or how to effectively manage and interpret the data telematics provides, it is easy to see how even the most veteran fleet professional can feel overwhelmed.
To help you craft a comprehensive strategy that ensures you maximize the impact of your telematics solution, here are several key factors to keep in mind.
OPTIMIZE THE FOUNDATIONAL
In recent years, telematics technology and analytic tools have completely changed how companies approach managing a fleet. With the increased transparency telematics provides, you know precisely how your fleet is performing in real-time. This connectivity and insight can help you optimize the fundamentals of effective fleet management.
In terms of use cases, tried and true applications – safety, utilization, compliance, productivity, and sustainability – continue to provide the foundation of a strong telematics strategy. As you look to maximize the impact of your telematics investment, make sure you’re leveraging the technology to drive improvement and efficiency across foundational use cases such as:
- Asset Tracking
- Mileage Reporting
- Monitoring Preventative Maintenance Services
- Monitoring Vehicle Utilization/Availability
- Measuring Fuel Economy
- Regulatory Compliance/ELD Mandates
Now, with these fundamentals in place, you’re ready to build upon your initial successes and explore additional use cases to deliver even more value to your business.
IDENTIFY YOUR BUSINESS’ PAIN POINTS
At first glance, telematics may appear to be a resource only for fleet operations. Technology is a powerful tool that will benefit most companies across virtually all areas of their business. To unlock the full potential of your telematics solution, you should look to leverage the insight it delivers as a catalyst for change across your entire organization, not just your fleet operations.
You’ll benefit greatly by engaging other fleet stakeholders throughout your business – operations, HR, safety, customer relations – to better understand their challenges or pain points to identify opportunities where telematics may provide a solution.
For example, your customer relations team may highlight that providing reliable arrival times for service appointments is a point of frustration for customers. Using telematics, you can better monitor technician routing and service times to more accurately forecast appointment windows, and ultimately enhance customer satisfaction. While this scenario isn’t directly a fleet issue, it is a terrific example of how telematics can make a meaningful impact across your business when you engage fleet stakeholders to understand their challenges.
Simply put, what are the challenges your business is trying to overcome? Don’t be afraid to challenge the status quo and explore creative ways to leverage telematics to navigate complex business problems.
EXPANDING YOUR USE CASES
With technology, insight, and resources in place to make your telematics data actionable, you can begin to solve more complex challenges to make the most of your investment.
Opportunities to leverage this increased visibility may include:
- Measuring downtime to increase efficiency
- Increasing visibility to diagnostic data to optimize preventative maintenance
- Identifying potential fuel fraud using fuel tank data, location information, and transaction details
- Identifying opportunities to right size your fleet based on utilization
- Monitoring driving performance to determine your drivers’ impact on total cost of ownership
- Measuring productivity and time on a job site to establish SLAs and notify/update customers in real time
As you begin to explore other use cases, you’ll want to be specific or targeted about the next challenge you try to solve.
For example, if your insurance premiums are on the rise, perhaps there’s an opportunity to explore performance-based insurance. Using telematics data, your fleet management provider and insurance carrier can determine a more accurate risk profile, potentially reducing your insurance premiums and liability exposure to generate additional return on your telematics investment.
This strategic and intentional approach will help to ensure you – and your fleet stakeholders – are not overwhelmed with hollow data while still driving meaningful improvement.
EFFECTIVELY MANAGING DATA
Every day, a typical fleet generates millions of data points – fuel transactions, maintenance records, licensing events, and more. Combine this information with telematics data – driver performance, vehicle location, routing – and it is easy to see how even veteran fleet professionals can struggle to process this volume of data at the speed at which it is generated. Simply processing the data isn’t enough; you need knowledge and insight.
The effectiveness of any telematics program is determined by the speed at which you can effectively analyze data and implement change based on that information.
Seamlessly integrating telematics data with the rest of your fleet information is vital to any truly impactful strategy and your fleet management provider is integral to this process. In most cases, your fleet management partner is your data integrator; consolidating information to provide a holistic view of fleet performance. This insight allows you to dig deeper into areas where costs are rising or efficiency is declining, ultimately fueling better decision making.
IT’S NOT TOO LATE TO GET STARTED
While most fleet operators are using telematics to some extent, if you have yet to implement a telematics strategy, remember, it isn’t too late to get started. To begin with, look at potentially leveraging telematics for a particular segment or geographic region of your fleet. Alternatively, you can look to use telematics to solve a specific challenge to avoid being overwhelmed by information.
Don’t wait for the ‘perfect’ scenario and continue to miss out on the value telematics can provide, even on a small scale. As you begin to build momentum, you can take the lessons you learn and expand your telematics program to additional segments of your fleet or explore other potential use cases.
EMBRACING A CULTURE OF CHANGE
Change can be challenging but often, complacency is worse. While telematics can be an incredibly powerful tool, you can’t just “plug it in” and expect change to occur overnight. Success requires an organizational commitment and a culture ready to embrace change. It is the action your business takes with the data telematics provides that becomes the true solution.
With that in mind, it is important to be realistic about your organization’s ability or appetite for change. If your company is unwilling or unable to change a particular aspect of your business, you are likely to be better served focusing your efforts on areas where you can drive meaningful improvement.
For example, if you don’t have a plan or organizational commitment to address driver performance, there is little benefit to monitoring this area of your fleet operations. Keep in mind, some use cases may not be a fit for every organization. Instead, determine what data is truly actionable and what changes are viable to make the greatest impact on your business.
LEVERAGING YOUR FLEET MANAGEMENT PARTNER AS A CHANGE AGENT
For most fleet operators, a telematics solution represents a significant investment in terms of both time and money. To get the most out of this investment, it is extremely beneficial to align with strong strategic partners who can help you maximize the potential of your telematics solution.
In addition to being the data integrator, your fleet management partner should also be a solution provider and an agent of change. Your fleet management provider needs to make the data actionable, providing recommendations and solutions that deliver value to your organization. Together, you’ll want to leverage the data to uncover the ‘why’ behind your business challenges to develop a better ‘how’ for improvement.
Additionally, fleet management providers typically work with a variety of fleets (many of whom are like yours), and they’re aware of unique or emerging use cases that may be able to help your fleet overcome a particular challenge.
About the Author
Frank Daccardi is the manager of telematics at Holman.
Learn more about how Holman can help you better monitor – and act upon – key performance indicators and ensure you’re maximize your telematics ROI. To learn more, visit www.holman.com.
