There continues to be a lot written about fleets and telematics because it is an industry that is in some ways still finding a purpose. The potential benefits are as varied as the systems and providers spruiking their services.
So fleet managers without a clear problem to solve will struggle to justify the costs to senior management.
WEX Australia director product and marketing Asia-Pacific Susan Nicholson has seen a number of changes in recent years and thinks variation in products is encouraging greater adoption by fleets.
"While you aren't necessarily seeing an erosion of costs in the telematics space, what you're seeing is the offering of different pricing models, packages and solutions," says Nicholson.
"When telematics first hit our shores predominately all that was available was a perpetual licence with a high up-front cost and ongoing monthly rental model. This model was prohibitively expensive for many businesses when you are looking at a 1000-unit fleet, with a $300 unit cost that's $300k out of the gate".
"Today, models that provide great base functionality with no up-front costs and reasonable monthly rental make it a much more viable solution for many businesses. As a consequence we are starting to see much higher rates of adoption."
The initial value proposition of telematics was to track a valuable asset and guard against theft. So for a business operating in a high-risk environment, or with small portable assets, telematics was another form of insurance.
Where asset security was not as important, providers spotted an opportunity to monitor driver behaviour and safety to reduce the risk of accidents. This raised concerns about employee privacy, plus the savings are harder to quantify, so some industries implemented telematics while others were still not convinced of the benefits.
Combining telematics with resource planning to manage a field sales force has become popular with service-based industries. The productivity improvements gained by using tablet-based systems that can managing time-based invoicing are significant.
Let the gamification begin
Organisations with a sales force driving passenger fleets are adopting app-based systems that provide a low-cost implementation and can help reduce administration associated with FBT while providing opportunities for gamification of telematics.
Christopher Chisman-Duffy, Australia and New Zealand strategic sales manager at TomTom Telematics, believes gamification is one way to engage employees to drive and treat a company car as if it were their own.
"For employees, it's not their vehicle and they don't have to foot the bill for fuel and maintenance costs. Yet, changing an employee's driving behaviour is no easy task," says Chisman-Duffy.
"One approach gaining traction is the concept of gamification. Simply put, gamification uses traditional game mechanics to engage and motivate, making small modifications to everyday behaviours.
"When applied to fleet vehicles, this could mean improving driver behaviour, reducing maintenance costs, improving your fleet's green credentials or better adhering to health and safety requirements.
"Essentially, gamification helps to simplify the process of changing driving behaviour, incentivising good habits, rather than criticising the bad, as well as improving employee engagement.
"By implementing the latest in fleet management technology and motivating staff through gamification, businesses will be able to completely revolutionise the way in which their vehicles are driven, whilst reducing maintenance and insurance costs, risk and fines. It's now just a choice as to what part of the fleet you need to address most."
Changes to cost structures are allowing new market entrants to approach the same problem differently, or redefine the problem based on customer feedback and evolving technology.
Roy Cooke, of Australian telematics start-up iungo, is using technology and a blank piece of paper to develop a new system that will focus on the benefits of connecting similar services and providing insights rather than collecting data.
"We have developed a complete technology solution that enables car owners to seamlessly connect their car with a cloud-based solution. This solution then curates, enriches and analyses the car data and can make it available to a new ecosystem of related providers to seamlessly use this data to improve and innovate their existing suite of services," says Cooke.
"Additionally, users will also be able enjoy new services such as remote crash detection and parental controls. We are trying to simplify the increasingly complex process of sharing personal information by managing consents in line with local privacy laws in a secure and managed way which enables full control and visibility into where and how data is consumed."
