– By Caroline Falls –
“Right now is actually the coolest time to be in the fleet industry,” reckons Ron Sullivan, mobility expert and co-founder of OviDrive, an out of the box solution that automates fleet operations, supplier management and payments.
“The world now is about connected mobility,” and the issues of privacy and security that the advent of the connected car stirs up, said Sullivan, speaking at a forum on technology at the AfMA 2019 fleet management conference in Melbourne during May.
Using PowerPoint, Sullivan conjured up a connected car called Zena, who interacted with an app on a driver’s iPhone, populating it with data. Zena could create work orders for maintenance service, keep track of costs, make payments and so on.
Make no mistake said Sullivan the technology for the connected car and the connected fleet manager is here.
“The car industry disrupted the horse and buggy industry. Is someone going to do to the fleet industry what netflix did to the movie industry?” Sullivan said, adding, “One thing we do know is people are trying.”
OviDrive is among them. OviDrive automates fleet operations. It combines live vehicle and driver data, maintenance control, fleet operations and the supplier stack into a single system where every aspect of a fleet is managed and then uses the power of AI and machine learning to achieve increasing levels of efficiency for the fleet manager.
Sullivan said fleet managers need to understand the technology in which they are operating. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a fleet manager or work for a fleet company, or are a supplier into that industry you are going to be affected.”
The role of the fleet manager today was all about data, said Sullivan, collecting it and acting on it. If you’ve ever wondered why you’re busy, it’s because all data leads to the fleet manager.
“With the amount of data that is rolling through it’s only just going to get busier,” he said. Fleet managers need to ask how they can potentially use the technology today.
According to Sullivan, the technology needs to be delivered into the fleet; a mobility operating system needs to be able to connect with multiple and ever changing sources of data and iteratively improve thanks to artificial intelligence and machine learning. Any fleet management system needs to be connected; it needs to be updated just as apps on our smart phones are constantly updated and seamlessly give us the latest technology platform.
“You need to have a data driven ecosystem, seamless data that’s acted upon to achieve your goals,” said Sullivan.
