What is Telematics?
Quite simply, a small electronic box fitted discretely inside your vehicle, that sends signals on a regular basis, with details of where it is and what speed it is travelling at. This data comes from the GPS Satellite system, which also feeds position data to millions of SatNav units all over the world.
Modern tracking systems, such as the Pinpointers P200 unit, also support a variety of other types of information, such as periods of engine idling, battery voltage monitoring, door open sensors, to name a few. The most advanced systems now integrate to the vehicles engine management systems, and can report performance and driver behaviour data, such as harsh acceleration and braking, time using the cruise control, pedal position, rpm bands, fuel consumption, and engine diagnostics. The Pinpointers P-CAN has full support for all light commercial and heavy goods vehicles, from Euro3 engines onwards.
All of this rich telematics information is fed back over the mobile phone network to our central servers, where it is processed and stored. You access the information from your PC using your favourite browser, or from a handheld device such as a Blackberry or Smartphone. Configurable alerts will tell you immediately about important events, such as excessive idling, a Job running late, a battery running low – sent via email or SMS.
How can my business benefit?
Ask anybody who has had vehicle tracking, coach tracking or trailer tracking on their fleet, and they will tell you that they couldn’t live without it. In the same way that mobile phones became indispensable to us over a decade ago, now tracking has become the business tool that you know you must have if you are going to take full control of your fleet.
The range of benefits that a fleet manager can derive from telematics data sent from their fleet is quite remarkable. A reduction in each vehicles fuel consumption is the first and probably most noticeable, followed closely by improvements in business efficiency, reduction in administrative tasks such as overtime claims or expenses submissions, improvements in customer relationships due to the increased transparency of operations, reduction in frequency of incidents and accidents, reduction of servicing requirements. All these reduce operational costs within your business, and return complete control to you over your most remote assets – your vehicles and your drivers.
