GPS navigation is essential for most fleets, helping drivers efficiently travel from Point A to Point B and ensuring on-time deliveries. However, in larger fleets with multiple vehicles, GPS alone doesn't provide fleet managers with a complete picture of driver locations and activities.
Telematics elevates basic navigation technology by offering fleet managers comprehensive data to enhance the entire fleet's efficiency. This advanced navigation aids drivers in route planning and helps fleets save on fuel and maintenance costs, monitor driver behavior, and boost overall productivity.
Is telematics navigation the right choice for your fleet and company’s bottom line?
Telematics vs. GPS
Unlike GPS, which provides navigation for a single driver and vehicle, telematics devices gather and store information on all the vehicles in your fleet. This is ideal for tracking purposes and also enables the fleet to work better as a unit.
But the two technologies aren’t in competition with each other. GPS is the central technology of any modern telematics solution and is used to collect data about vehicles in your fleet in real-time. This data can include location and engine status, personal or after-hours vehicle usage, and general engine diagnostics, as well as a host of other metrics that can be used for training purposes to improve safety, efficiency, and productivity.
The telematics device itself can be loaded onto a mobile device or part of a vehicle’s onboard diagnostic port. Some telematics solutions come standard from the vehicle’s original manufacturer and are permanently affixed.
Your telematics solution often includes a navigation element that has been specifically designed for your fleet and compiles data from all of your commercial drivers. That collected data is then sent — typically through the cellular network — to a central data center where it can be accessed by any computer or device through an internet connection.
This collaboration offers drivers and fleet managers more than just navigation. Drivers can use this information to access the best route based on their truck’s weight and load, for example, or access real-time updates on road and weather conditions.
Benefits of Fleet Telematics
For commercial fleets, telematics is completely changing the way fleets are managed, providing fleet managers with valuable information they can use to improve overall driver safety, training, and productivity. These solutions can track all kinds of data in real-time, including driver acceleration and braking patterns, maintenance schedules, and automatic collision notifications.
Armed with data collected from a telematics solution, managers can identify ways to improve efficiency by analyzing how many miles drivers are logging, how long they sit idle, and even specific driver performance and behaviors that can be modified to ultimately save on fuel and maintenance costs.
Productivity can be improved by using collected data to map better and more fuel-efficient routes with less traffic, and reassigning vehicles to reduce downtimes and response times to ultimately improve customer service.
Benefits of Cameras
Smith360® telematics devices offer so much more than GPS tracking. Our world-class video and camera solutions detect and capture risk in real time, identify distracted driving behavior, and prevent incidents with in-vehicle alerts. By leveraging innovative AI camera technology, our solutions automatically capture high-definition video and send footage to the cloud for review within minutes, making it easier than ever to spot and address driving violations. This proactive approach not only helps in preventing accidents but also improves driver behavior, lowers insurance premiums, reduces fuel and maintenance costs, and simplifies record-keeping and administrative processes.
Our video telematics solutions make a positive impact on overall fleet safety and efficiency. Equipped with forward-facing, driver-facing, and rear-facing cameras, our devices cover every angle of the vehicle, ensuring comprehensive monitoring. Each camera is designed for quick installation with multiple options to connect to power, making the setup process hassle-free.
Additionally, our telematics devices are deeply integrated within the MyGeoTab platform, combining live video with telematics data into one user interface.
Telematics and Improved Driver Safety
By monitoring individual driving habits, overall driver safety can also be improved.
Telematics enables fleet managers to monitor the dangerous driving behaviors of individual drivers and identify which drivers may need additional training. For example, managers can use the collected data to identify those drivers who regularly drive 10 mph over the speed limit, forget to buckle their seatbelts, accelerate too quickly, or excessively use their brakes.
Telematics enables fleet managers to see a complete profile of all of their drivers, including past driving records and current driving habits. Not only does this data make it easy to identify which drivers need more training, but it can also be used to show insurers your fleet’s safe driving history, which can ultimately lead to lower premiums.
The telematics device can also capture a vehicle’s last 30 seconds of dynamics in the case of a crash so that the cause can be investigated.
Smith System’s Smith 360™ Driver Management Program combines onboard diagnostics with GPS, providing fleet managers with monitoring, analysis, reporting, intervention, and training. Smith360® tracks your fleet while also monitoring driver behavior and is the only telematics program directly tied to driver safety training.
To learn more about how telematics combined with behind-the-wheel driver training can provide you with a deeper understanding of your fleet, contact the Smith System team of experts today.
