Telematics can provide a raft of valuable information for your business or organisation. However, more often than not for those businesses outside of the Logistics and Mining industries, Telematics fails to deliver the results they were seeking.
So how do so many get this so wrong, let’s explore five key reasons that will provide some clarity to assist you in ensuring your Telematics solution delivers the results you want.
Not clearly defining the issue or improvement
What are you trying to solve? Driver safety, FBT, Fuel Usage, Driver location / allocation. You need to define exactly what it is you are trying to achieve. Telematics may not be the answer, or, it may only be a component of the solution that also requires Policy Changes and driver education.
Not Enough Research
All Telematics System suppliers can deliver location, driver behaviour, fuel profiling, utilisation and FBT reporting, however, you may need a tailored solution that requires modifications or a hybrid solution. Who else has tried to solve this issue? Is there anyone in your network that is using Telematics that can share their journey and what has worked for them. If you can’t find a system that delivers what you need then look at other alternatives.
Poor Implementation
Simply installing the system into your fleet and telling drivers that you are now using telematics is a recipe for failure. You need to engage with drivers early in the process to get their buy in and bring them along for the journey. Getting buy in early will reduce any pushback from drivers around privacy and how and what data the system will be capturing.
Ongoing Management
All too often Telematics is installed into a fleet only to be forgotten about after a short while.
Unless you have a dedicated person within your Safety or Fleet department team monitoring and making changes based on what the system is telling you, then you will never achieve your original goal. Just like CRM systems, if they are not used / monitored and administered correctly they become a very costly mistake that only gets worse as time goes on.
System providers not delivering what you wanted
Another issue can be the Telematics provider not delivering what you asked for. If you ask if they can provide a certain feature or report then you need to get a live example of this, rather than a promise that they can deliver this in the future.
Contact Sage Fleet if you would like independent advice on Telematics systems and the problems they can solve.