Connected Fleets Improve Your Bottom Line

Telematics and connected fleets management have just gotten a boost from one of the world’s largest vehicle manufacturers. Ford announced that it is expanding the reach of its fleet-monitoring services across all makes and models regardless of automaker. Additional new features enable fleet managers the ability to better manage compliance, with a fleet-wide driver behavior dashboard and fleet-level notifications to help reduce human error and manage the total cost of ownership.

This service is intended to provide businesses the flexibility they need to manage their connected fleets while helping to better manage driver behavior, performance, and compliance goals. Ford Telematics Essentials, a complimentary version of the service for Ford vehicles, provides vehicle health insights, trackable maintenance, remote viewing of malfunction and warning light information, and even recall information.

See also: Is Autonomous Transportation More Distant Than We Think?

“The driver behavior dashboard gives managers a survey of how their vehicles are performing, providing information about trends that involve harsh braking or acceleration, speeds driven over posted limits or fleet-set thresholds, seatbelt use and idling time,” according to Ford. “A personal driver score also lets fleet managers quickly see how specific drivers are doing, giving them opportunities to further coach them on best practices and areas of improvement.”

Connected vehicle and asset operations platforms are still hampered by disconnected systems and data siloes, a survey of 227 companies by IntelliShift finds. “Disconnected systems have long plagued the telematics industry, preventing data from being leveraged as a strategic asset,” the study’s authors state. Three in five respondents labeled having access to real-time, non-siloed data as their top priority, with 86% noting that access to non-siloed data has provided deep insights for their organizations. Additional priorities identified as critical are ease of use or implementation (55%) and leveraging a unified, all-in-one platform that not only collects data but synthesizes it to provide actionable or predictive insights (40%).

When asked what is most important for this connected fleet data to help within their organizations, the responses reveal that cost reduction and resource management of people or assets rose to the top at 45% and 38% respectively, followed closely by increased monetization of vehicles and assets (30%), connecting operations processes (20%) and business intelligence (17%).

Additional findings highlight the key benefits of connected vehicle and asset operations platforms include more streamlined processes. Seven in 10 respondents (70%) say that process optimization has increased since deploying a connected vehicle and asset operations platform.