Modern telematics can provide insights into technical aspects of fleet management, such as idle times, fuel consumption, vehicle fault information, or emissions. But it can also inform fleet business decisions based on customer visit times, driver’s behavior, or weather conditions. So let’s briefly review some of the most popular ways fleet managers up their game with vehicle data.
Theft prevention
Preventing car theft is the most basic scenario in which a telematics device tracks the GPS position of a car and may send automated alerts to notify the manager about any suspicious behaviors. GPS tracking can also locate a trailer unhooked from the body of a vehicle, while telematics systems can monitor petrol levels to detect fuel theft.
Route optimization
This refers to tracking and tracing vehicles to ensure that routes are respected and that deliveries are on time. Route monitoring systems read data from devices to make rides more time-efficient, improve vehicle utilization, and save costs.
Driver monitoring
Geofencing is a location-based technology triggering a specific action when a mobile device or tagged device enters a particular geographical area, called geofence. Frequent in retail, it also helps fleet managers put stringent controls on drivers, monitor unauthorized use of vehicles, or alert them when a car goes outside a designated area.
Increasing safety
The repercussions of any car accident on a fleet business can be far-reaching—from health damage to repair costs and tarnished reputation. But with telematics data, insights into driving behavior can give coaches much richer content to train fleet drivers in safe driving and link their habits to quantified exposure to accidents. As a result, the fleet’s risk exposure can decrease by up to 60%.
Fuel consumption and eco-efficiency
Data insights are also vital for optimizing fleets in terms of fuel consumption and eco-efficiency through improving routes, reducing idle times, and detecting vehicle issues. On top of that, significant savings can be made on working with drivers to reduce fuel-inefficient behaviors such as lack of braking anticipation, unnecessary high speed, or harsh accelerations.
Enhanced fleet composition
Choosing between SUVs, cargo vans, minivans, sedans, coupes, crossovers, wagons, trucks, and the other vehicle types can be mind-boggling. Especially as electric and hybrid solutions come to the equation. However, using fleet optimization analytics saves this issue for fleet managers, providing suggestions on optimal vehicle makeup based on the fleet mobility patterns.
Lower maintenance overhead
Doing maintenance too early will waste money on parts that still have a lot of life, but doing it too late can cause unexpected downtime. To identify the ideal time for maintenance, fleets take advantage of predictive analytics based on data, which tells them exactly what part and when to fix or replace.