Drawing from the fields of informatics and telecommunications, telematics is a nascent industry that harnesses the power of geolocation technology to make it easier for businesses to manage their assets. Safety monitoring, vehicle tracking, and fleet management are all made possible with cutting edge telematics solutions that redefine safety, productivity, and cost savings. While telematics is typically used to monitor fleets of highly mobile assets, telematics systems and their related products and services can be used for a wide range of equipment or tools.

Telematics also goes under the simpler names of GPS vehicle tracking or GPS fleet management. These systems are typically reliant on a vehicle-based computer that will keep track of variables such as speed, tyre pressure, fuel consumption, and other details. This is easier with modern vehicles because of how existing metrics such as these are already being tracked using smart technologies by vehicle manufacturers.

Regarding data aggregation and transmission, all the data required is gathered via a black box plugged into the vehicle's CAN-BUS or OBD II port. As the device possesses a SIM card, it is connected to the cellular network, and with that, it can communicate with the company's backend systems, allowing operations managers to track fleet performance and movements.

The Benefits Offered by Telematics

There are several key advantages to having telematics as part of your business solutions. Still, these are the six core areas where the technology truly helps enhance and simplify fleet management:

Productivity

Productivity is an essential benefit of telematics for vehicles offering a variety of routing and dispatching services. A company can improve its customer service through trip reporting, and GPS tracking provides positive externalities across the operational spectrum.

Safety

Safety is one of the most vital aspects in fleet management. A company can better train its drivers through in-vehicle coaching, risk reporting, and traffic notifications. The telematics systems can also locate the geographical position of stolen vehicles.

Fleet Optimisation

Maintenance schedules can be simplified through predictive maintenance, fuel management, and diagnostics undertaken remotely, leading to a streamlined process for fleet optimisation. Tracking the idling and fuel-guzzling habits of the vehicles ensures asset profitability.

Compliance

Balancing the above, beyond safety itself, compliance can be monitored using telematics through reporting, electronic tracking of inspections, and the electronic logging of service hours.

Integration

Telematics is easy to integrate and can also be implemented into CRMs or dashcams, allowing it to work seamlessly with existing technology.

Sustainability

Whilst other options waste time and other valuable resources, telematics on the other hand plays a huge role in being environmentally sustainable through the reining in of the fleet's environmental impact and carbon emissions, thus making the company's fleet of vehicles and its operations eco-friendlier.

While these six major areas are the focal points of benefits in adopting telematics as a business solution, there are some other key advantages in adopting telematics as part of your fleet management solutions. For example, insurance companies can use telematics to monitor and analyse one's driving habits, and exemplary safe driving habits can be utilised by individuals to qualify for lower vehicle insurance premiums.

While it's still in its infancy, driver identification has also been implemented into some telematics systems to make the stealing of vehicles a lot harder. With one of these systems installed, the vehicle will check to see if the one behind the steering wheel is the owner or an authorised user before it starts up; reliably gauging risk levels has never been more attainable. With such a feature, having identification sensors in one's fleet of vehicles will significantly help reduce risks of theft and accidents, as the drivers' identities are now required before any vehicle that the company owns can be started for operation.

Telematics in Fleet Management

When used for fleet management, telematics through data analytics can help track and reduce fuel consumption. It can also track the time spent on the road and time spent idling to see if a company's drivers cost the company time and money. With data provided by telematics systems, businesses can tell if a driver is speeding or driving recklessly, allowing them to be appropriately penalised.

Telematics is used by many companies, including small and large companies, not-for-profits, and government agencies. According to Allied Market Research, the worldwide automotive telematics market was valued at $50.4 billion back in 2018, with a projected CAGR of 20.8% from 2020 to 2026.

Here are some industries that use telematics to keep track of their fleets:

• Towing companies
• Couriers
• Delivery companies
• Catering companies
• Trucking companies
• Construction companies
• Utilities
• Emergency services
• Car rental agencies
• Waste management agencies
• Landscaping companies
• Oil and gas industry
• Mass transit fleets
• Plumbing and HVAC services

The Future of Telematics and Fleet Management

The future of telematics promises to make vehicle monitoring more seamless by reducing data update lag and augmenting the number of data points that can be tracked. Over time, as vehicle computers become more sophisticated, more and more minute details of automotive performance will be visible through telematics. Here are some exciting areas of telematics innovation that we at PCI Ltd are keeping an eye on:

• Performance benchmarking for vehicles
• Intelligence data
• Facilitating smart cities through the collection of urban analytics
• Paving the way for the implementation of the IoT in the form of smart homes and smart cities.

How Can PCI Help?

PCI specialises in telematics across a wide range of industries, and our fully integrated engineering, design, product development, and manufacturing platform is incredibly versatile and competitively priced. We offer everything from standard telematics packages to bespoke setups for fleets of unique vehicles. Harnessing our expertise in antenna design, Bluetooth, geolocation, and vehicle communication, we're able to set up robust systems that will keep track of vehicles in a range of environments and conditions thanks to IPX ruggedisation.

Successful EMS Partnerships for A Prosperous Future

Telematics promises to be the future of how companies and governments manage their vehicles and assets. Having a centralised location to keep track of performance and maintenance data for one's fleet of vehicles allows them to be better maintained, better driven, and kept in compliance with ease. If you're interested in what a telematics system can do for your fleet, don't hesitate to contact us here at PCI. You can either email us or call us to discuss a project, and we'll outline what we can do for you, how much it will cost, and the timeline in which we'll have it completed.

Summary

Telematics is fast becoming an essential business solution for any company involved with transportation and/or shipping. With its provision of vital data, telematics is key in helping such businesses assess safety, compliance, and productivity. Companies that use telematics to optimise and manage their fleets and other equipment will have a clear advantage by fully analysing their data and making better-informed decisions regarding a variety of key functions from wear and tear of parts to their ROI for time and money spent.

Telematics harnesses and simplifies relevant data, makes the future's growth possible, and will be key in allowing smart cars and smart cities to function with minimal risk of injury or incident. Performance benchmarks will enable constant improvement of functionalities whilst cutting down on costs to increase successive output.