Sofico has taken its market-leading Miles software system for automotive finance, leasing, fleet and mobility management to an exciting new frontier by complementing it with a next generation services platform built upon cutting-edge cloud technology.
Using a cloud-native micro-services architecture that enables modular feature delivery, 24/7 availability and elastic on-demand scalability, the platform offers near real-time data integration and advanced analytics power. It forms the backbone of an array of fresh mobility and connected-car services and use cases, including mobile and web front ends, and will pave the way for future developments in machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Sofico has commenced a number of projects with existing clients based on this next generation services platform to help them transform their current operations and expand into a broader portfolio of service offerings and business models with a large ecosystem of different mobility modes and providers, and various integrations of data flows and financial transactions.
User-centric native mobile app
Grafted onto the new platform, Sofico’s latest driver companion app makes user-centric information available with an intelligent context-based delivery system, enabling a range of powerful location-based features for on-the-move users including service reminders, online booking, incident reporting, details of leasing contracts, mileage forecasts, and end-of-contract handovers.
A white label solution which can be branded for any company as well as tailored to meet specific client needs, it is available as a native app for both Apple and Android devices.
Sofico is also preparing a new generation of customizable and brandable web portals for fleet customers, drivers and other business partners, with greater functionality and integration with Content Management Systems. The next generation services platform will underpin this with the necessary high availability, scalability and resilience features expected of future-ready portals.
Advanced big data powered solutions
The platform can ingest, stream, transform and distribute data in near real-time, either to be visualized interactively in applications such as Miles (in back and front office), merged with internal or external data sources, dissected with analytical models and tools to derive actionable insights, or to dynamically generate new business flows.
Sofico customers can move from descriptive reporting and diagnostic exploration to more predictive and prescriptive analytics, driving significant value and allowing businesses to focus efforts on finding opportunities for innovation.
Possible applications include driver or fleet profiling, integration of vehicle telematics data to feed metrics or events back into the Miles system, dynamic mobile or web visualizations and notifications, and combining with information from transport networks or third parties to initiate new processing.
Future proofing in a fast-evolving market
Sofico Chief Technology Officer, Piet Maes, said the new services platform and the new Mobile, Web and Analytics solutions it powers would provide Sofico’s customers with the system they required going forward to future proof their businesses in the light of fast-evolving and developing market conditions.
“Although Miles is the world’s leading hybrid fleet and retail contract management system, the mobility ecosystem is being disrupted rapidly and we need to continually run to keep ahead. Our clients need quicker time-to-market for new service offerings, with access to faster processing, large amounts of data and business intelligence upon which they can take better informed business decisions, across a variety of different channels and delivered through the cloud.”
