– By Caroline Falls –
The take-up of telematics, or GPS tracking and diagnostics, for fleets is at a tipping point with access to the technology at affordable rates making the information management tools easier than ever to install.
In addition, the recent television advertising campaigns by Domino’s showing GPS tracking of the delivery driver and insurance groups including QBE and NRMA offering users of their safe driver apps discounts on their premiums have caused a leap in consumer expectations that service providers will have the information about the location of their parcel or service provider at their fingertips.
“There’s a conditioning happening in the marketplace right now,” said Walter Scremin, general manager delivery fleet provider Ontime Group which uses Ontime Earth GPS tracking to help manage its 400 vehicles. “The market’s changing and people are getting accustomed to it. It’s just becoming fairly standard.”
The low-cost point of entry today removes a major detractor to utilise the technology. Systems have been simplified and are as easy as downloading an app onto drivers’ smart phones and software onto a computer for receiving, collating and reporting the information on vehicle location, stoppages, routes, and times in and out, which are useful for customer service and for identifying and solving inefficiency issues.
“In the past it was in the domain of larger transport companies and it’s now at a cost where anybody who has a driver and a vehicle can have it,” Scremin said. “Customers expect it. There is no excuse not to have it.”
Ontime’s telematics system known as Ontime Earth is available as an app called Envoy for as little as $20 a month. Scremin said the app can be dowloaded and learned by a driver in 15 minutes. The manager responsible for utilising the system can be shown how to use and get reports in 30 minutes, Scremin said. As recent as a couple of years ago systems like this cost thousands of dollars per vehicle to install.
The key benefit promoted by telematics providers is that the systems know driver and vehicle locations at all times, giving them information to provide better customer service (for example, how far away a certain delivery or service call is, as well as answer any customer queries about time charged on invoices) and to manage inefficiencies such as stoppages and route overlaps. Telematics is a term coined for the fusion of telecommunications and informatics,
The latest research from market information group ACA Research shows that in the Australian trucking industry, the first adopters of telematics, the take-up rate in large fleets of more than 25 trucks was 76 percent. For fleets of between six and 25 trucks the rate was 49 percent; it was just 18 percent for those with less than six vehicles.
“There’s enormous market opportunity,” said Scremin. “The minority have it and the majority is yet to adopt it.”
ACA Research reports that there are some near 30 providers of telematics system in Australia, with the top seven brands (Navman, MTData, TomTom, IVMS, Volvo, Ctrack, and MiX Telematics holding about 65 percent of the market share and another 20 or so companies, including Fleetmatics, holding a combined 35 percent.
