The connected fleet

As companies strive to cut costs, improve workflow efficiency and stay ahead of the competition, open platform fleet technology can help them achieve their goals.

Achieving business goals for firms running vehicles, whether sales reps, delivery personnel or field service engineers, has led to many turning to telematics systems to improve planning, scheduling, responsiveness and customer service.

Access to data is, after all, vital to achieving these objectives. Managing mobile workers can be a challenging task without a meaningful insight into their activities out on the road — from location and job completion information to details on their driving performance.

Connected vehicle and open platform technology is now taking this management to a whole new level. New opportunities are opening up for firms to improve their business workflow and benefit from automated, paperless processes.

By seamlessly integrating different business technologies, data can be brought together to improve business efficiency and provide greater insight into operations. Rather than existing in isolation, different technology platforms can speak to one another, removing the need for management to analyse different data sources on different platforms.

Using an open telematics platform, information from a range of sources can be integrated, including routing and scheduling software, CRM or ERP systems and mobile hardware.

The costs associated with technology integrations, in the past, meant this was out of reach for many businesses. Out-of-the-box software integrations available today, however, mean that back-office systems are seamlessly connecting with vehicles and mobile workers in the field without the need for expensive IT consultancy.

What’s more, events such as the TomTom Telematics .connect Developer Conference are driving ongoing innovation in the creation of new business apps, offering more choice for improved workflow management and a better customer experience across a wide range of industries. Customised applications can be adopted to meet the specific requirements of different business sectors.

How does connected technology work?

An open platform approach to telematics enables businesses to overcome the physical distance between mobile workers and the back office — and this is made possible by application programming interfaces (APIs). APIs provide access to data being generated by technology platforms and hold the key to enabling software developers to create integrated solutions.

Efficient workflow through apps

The practical outcome for businesses is smarter and more efficient workflow processes and more immediate insight into field processes with business intelligence being gathered in one place.

Any business operating vehicles can benefit, but a good example to illustrate the possible efficiency gains is a delivery company’s potential use of the system. Mobile workers can be given access to a tablet-style device with apps relating to their daily business processes. This is connected to back-office systems, meaning the data is always available to monitor and manage operations by management — all while the driver is fully connected for simple and smooth workflow in the field.

The obligatory vehicle check can be made via the device, at the start of each day or week, with the results instantly updated in the back office to ensure maintenance schedules are up to date and that duty of care responsibilities are met.

As soon as the check has been made, daily workflow can then be loaded onto the device and navigation provided to each destination along the worker’s route. Using live traffic data, the fleet management software can generate accurate ETAs for each journey, with automatic alerts sent to customers via text or email to advise them of arrival time.

On arrival, the worker can submit proof of delivery using the app’s signature capture functionality or by scanning with the device’s in-built camera or NFC chip. Once jobs are completed, status is updated in the back-office system, along with daily mileage records and worker hours, eliminating the need for separate, laborious record-keeping processes.

A wealth of out-of-the-box integrations are already available — TomTom Telematics, for example, has more than 330 technology partners — with more applications set to emerge as open platform telematics and the connected vehicle ecosystem evolves.

The future of business operations is changing, giving businesses the tools needed to meet customer service demands and the call for greater levels of efficiency.