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Synovia publishes new version of mobile app which includes tracking inoperable and lost/stolen vehicles and enhanced mapping functionality.

The fleet tracking technology company has launched the latest upgrade to its free mobile application designed for fleet managers to manage their fleet from anywhere with a smart device.

The latest version released to the Apple app store and Google Play will allow users to see multiple vehicles on simultaneously as well as filter vehicles shown on the map by groups. It will also allow for quick and easy navigation to broken-down vehicles to help personnel in the field get up and running more quickly.

Users will also be able to toggle between satellite views to provide greater understanding when vehicles may be off road or situated in a large parking facility.

“We continue to listen to our customers and invest significantly in our technology to better deliver the features and functionality they need to operate smarter and safer fleets, save money and provide improved customer service,” said Jon King, CEO, Synovia. “We recognise fleet managers require more information in a mobile application and will continue to innovate to enhance the mobile experience and deliver a more sophisticated user experience.”

The number of active fleet management systems deployed in commercial vehicle fleets in Australia and New Zealand was almost 0.8 million in Q4-2017 according to a new research report from the leading IoT analyst firm Berg Insight.

Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.4 percent, this number is expected to reach nearly 1.7 million by 2022. A wide variety of players serve the fleet telematics market in Australia and New Zealand, ranging from small local vendors to leading international solution providers. Though there is a myriad of very small players, the number of providers with large installed bases in the region is however relatively limited and the market is comparably consolidated in terms of market share.

The top-10 players in Australia and New Zealand account for almost 60 percent of the active units on the market, and more than 40 percent is even represented by the top-5.

Berg Insight ranks Teletrac Navman as the largest solution vendor in Australia and New Zealand, being the only player which has surpassed the milestone of 100,000 active units in the region.

“The runners-up are Verizon Connect, EROAD, MTData and Netstar based in the US, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa respectively”, said Rickard Andersson, Principal Analyst, Berg Insight. He adds that MTData is now owned by the Australian operator Telstra since 2017.

Other vendors with comparably sizeable subscriber bases in Australia and New Zealand include the local suppliers IntelliTrac, Smartrak, Coretex and Digital Matter, as well as international players including MiX Telematics and Fleet Complete. “Also a notable number of commercial vehicle OEMs have introduced fleet telematics solutions in the region, either independently or through partnerships with established telematics providers”, continued Mr. Andersson. Examples include Isuzu, Volvo Trucks, UD Trucks, Scania, PACCAR, Toyota, Hino, Mercedes-Benz and Mitsubishi.

Additional players including international aftermarket telematics providers and vehicle manufacturers as well as local actors are expected to expand in the market in the coming years. “The fleet management market in Australia and New Zealand is currently influenced positively by a number of different drivers including regulatory developments related to health and safety regulations, chain of responsibility legislation and road user charges”, concluded Mr. Andersson.

Download report brochure: Fleet Management in Australia and New Zealand

 

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International automotive technology provider ERM Advanced Telematics whose products have been installed in more than 5 million vehicles worldwide, is accelerating its penetration into the Latin American market with its offering for fleet management and solutions for Stolen Vehicle Recovery (SVR).

ERM plans to take advantage of its network of business partnerships throughout the region. In parallel, the company is planning to strengthen its reach and to increase the penetration of its telematics and fleet management solutions, including the StarLink modular telematics product line as well as products like eSafe for driving behaviour monitoring and eFuel, which is designed to provide alerts on fuel theft.

ERM is already active in a number of Latin American countries and is expected to utilize its teams, technology and know-how to customize the company’s products to meet the specific demands of the Latin American markets. This will enable ERM to offer dedicated and customized solutions to its local partners’ needs and allow the provision of various additional options such as white labelling products with the branding of the partner incorporated into the product.

“The demand for telematics solutions in Latin America stems from the need for vehicle security and tracking systems, which provide immediate support in emergency cases - such as panic buttons for vehicle hijacks, tracking for recovery of stolen vehicles and voice options for further assistance,” says Eitan Kirshenboim, CMO at ERM Telematics. “Many of the fleets in the region use basic fleet management tools, which limit their ability to monitor and improve the fleet performance in order to reduce costs."

 

"ERM is introducing to the Latin American market a line of unique solutions, that are backed up by patents and are flexible in design and customization abilities..."

 

Kirshenboim continued: "We believe that ERM’s advanced solutions and business strategy can help these fleets to improve their fleet performance, lower their operational costs and maximize their ROI.” He adds that ERM is introducing to the Latin American market a line of unique solutions, that are backed up by patents and are flexible in design and customization abilities, to support a wide range of scenarios and a variety of needs.

Kirshenboim notes that the company welcomes cooperation with leading players in the automotive and fleet management sector in Latin America. ERM’s business model is based on its customers being long-term partners, with whom the company is in close and ongoing relations, enabling them to define their demands and for ERM to supply a customized technological and service solution, backed up by a Spanish website, salespeople and customer support.

ERM offers different solutions for fleet management and Stolen Vehicle Recovery operations. The solutions vary from basic implementation to more comprehensive solutions, in order to better control and manage the fleets and to assist in the retrieving of vehicles and to enable each of ERM's partners to adopt a solution that is best suited for them.

ERM’s SVR basic implementation consists of vehicle location tracking and added accessories such as immobilization system, which requires drivers to identify themselves by using a code or other identification methods. Additional accessories include an alarm system, break in sensors, tow detection, remote door and windows control. Some of the more sophisticated technological solutions include CANbus integration for advanced diagnostics of the vehicles' mechanical and computerized environment. The diagnostics helps evaluate in real time the use made of the vehicle and helps to remotely identify in advance events which might affect the vehicle’s performance.

 

"The add-on features are based on the wide range of ERM sensors and hardware applications, as well as applications from third-party vendors..."

 

Some of the more comprehensive solutions offered by ERM include tracking devices equipped with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities, and a variety of add-ons to enable safety and fuel monitoring, voice capabilities and other alerts. The add-on features are based on the wide range of ERM sensors and hardware applications, as well as applications from third-party vendors.

Some other possible solutions for assisting ERM’s partners in SVR operations include a patented solution for jamming mitigation that enables the tracking of jammed vehicles by transmitting a distress message that is being picked-up by nearby vehicles. Another patented solution is designed to locate leased vehicles whose owner stopped its payments – “Parking Habits”.

The need for SVR solutions in Latin America is backed up by a market study by Berg Insights, which found the level of car theft in Brazil is four times that of the U.S. and that the situation in other Latin American markets like Mexico, Argentina and Venezuela is about the same.

 

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Verizon Connect is expanding its fleet management system REVEAL with a solution that enables businesses in the UK to manage assets in addition to their fleet of vehicles.

With the launch of the new GPS tracking system for assets, companies can gain insight into the location and performance of valuable assets such as cranes, trailers and excavators. As a result, they will be able to deploy their assets optimally, plan maintenance more efficiently and help reduce the risk of theft and other types of unauthorised usage.

Derek Bryan, EMEA Vice President, Verizon Connect: “At Verizon Connect, we are committed to ensuring that businesses in the UK have the tools to harness the power of data from every company asset. Many companies already rely on our solution to help them manage their vehicles and employees, but being able to track other valuable equipment and assets will further help them drive efficiencies, lower operational costs and improve their planning.”

Insight in location, usage and productivity assets

Similar to REVEAL’s system for vehicles, the new asset tracking system offers the ability to access data in both near real-time and historically to understand where equipment is and where it has been. It is also possible to see if machinery is running and how often it is used. This gives users and managers insights into equipment utilization and determining which assets should be moved elsewhere within the organisation or perhaps cycled out of use.

Asset maintenance and control

REVEAL’s asset tracking solution also offers users a variety of options to help minimise theft risk and other unauthorised usages. For example, it is possible to set up alerts that send managers a warning when equipment is turned on or moved outside of working hours – or when machinery is moved outside of its designated location.

To help companies plan the maintenance of their assets more efficiently and maximise uptime, REVEAL’s asset tracking solution also enables companies to record when trailers and other equipment are due for maintenance. For each asset, the system keeps a log and alerts can be configured based on planned maintenance or predetermined options, including engine hours.

For more information on the REVEAL fleet management solution visit https://www.verizonconnect.com/uk/solutions/gps-asset-tracking/

 

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The number of active fleet management systems deployed in commercial vehicle fleets in Europe was 7.7 million in Q4-2017, according to a new research report from the IoT analyst firm Berg Insight.

Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.2 percent, this number is expected to reach 15.6 million by 2022. The top-15 vendors have today more than 100,000 active units in Europe. TomTom’s subscriber base has grown both organically and by acquisitions during the past years and the company is the clear market leader on the European market and reached an installed base of about 708,000 units at year-end 2017. Masternaut is still in second place and had achieved an installed base of an estimated 250,000 units.

Berg Insight ranks Verizon Connect as the third largest player in terms of active installed base with around 235,000 units. ABAX, Microlise, Gurtam, Viasat, Bornemann, Teletrac Navman, Trimble, Transics and OCEAN (Orange) also have more than 100,000 active devices in the field. The HCV manufacturers are now growing their subscriber bases considerably in Europe thanks to standard line fitment of fleet management solutions. Dynafleet by Volvo, FleetBoard by Daimler and Scania Fleet Management are the most successful with active subscriber bases of 117,000 units, 108,000 units and 219,000 units respectively as of Q4-2017.

The consolidation trend on this market continued in 2018. “Thirteen major mergers and acquisitions have taken place in the past twelve months among the vendors of fleet management systems in Europe”, said Johan Fagerberg, Principal Analyst, Berg Insight. ORBCOMM acquired Blue Tree Systems in October 2017. The acquisition of Blue Tree solidifies ORBCOMM’s transportation portfolio by adding truck in-cab and refrigerated fleet vehicle solutions to ORBCOMM’s cargo solutions. In December, ABAX acquired Danish Fleetfinder. The acquisition added approximately 7,000 vehicle subscriptions to ABAX Group’s existing subscription base.

Later in December, Viasat Group acquired a majority stake (51 percent) in Locster based in France. January of 2018 started with two acquisitions. EcoFleet was acquired by Fleet Complete and Verizon Connect moreover continued its European expansion with the acquisition of Movildata in Spain. Coyote acquired a 70 percent stake in Traqueur in February 2018. Later in April, Trackunit acquired UK-based telematics provider Satrak. GSGroup purchased Care4all based in Denmark in July 2018. Vehco was acquired by AddSecure in May 2018, which gave Vehco the structure and financial strength to further expand within fleet management. Vehco’s third acquisition followed in August 2018 when the company took over the ownership of Groeneveld ICT Solutions. AROBS Transilvania Software acquired SAS Grup in September.

The latest two transactions were done in September and October when Viasat Group acquired Detector in Spain as well as 60 percent of the shares in TrackIT Consulting in Portugal. Mr. Fagerberg anticipates that the market consolidation of the still overcrowded industry will continue in 2018–2019.

Download report brochure: Fleet Management in Europe

 

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City Technical Services, a leading provider of green energy servicing, maintenance and installation solutions, has adopted an advanced telematics system from Ctrack, an Inseego company. Ctrack Plug & Play, a self-installed tracking solution, will be used to monitor a fleet of 133 vans used by City Technical Services’ nationwide network of engineers. This will enable the company to make best use of mobile resources while ensuring vehicles are driven in a safe and efficient manner.

“As a green company, with over 10 years of experience in the renewables and energy efficiency industry, our focus is to cut emissions and save energy both for customers and within the business,” explained Kenny Henderson, Managing Director of City Technical Services. “Ctrack Plug & Play will help us operate responsibly and minimise our environmental impact by reducing mileage and fuel usage, as well as support our strong commitment to health and safety.”

Ctrack Plug & Play connects directly to the OBD II diagnostic port, so can be installed in a matter of seconds and quickly switched between vehicles when required. The tracking solution will provide City Technical Services with real-time visibility of its mobile assets, along with vehicle specific information from the on-board systems, driver behaviour monitoring and crash detection.

In addition to targeting efficiency and safety improvements, City Technical Services will use the tracking solution to enhance customer response times, especially for its emergency repairs service, by identifying the nearest, available engineer to an incoming job. The company will also take advantage of a comprehensive suite of reports to better understand fleet performance. It will use this added insight to address speeding and driving violations, identify excessive fuel usage and verify timesheets.

Steve Thomas, Managing Director of Ctrack commented: “The Ctrack Plug & Play solution is one of a wide range of telematics options we supply that also includes hardwired and long-life battery units.  All of these different unit types report back to a common interface allowing our customers to mix and match their hardware deployments to meet individual fleet and business requirements.”

 

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The blend of GPS, real-time traffic information and latest workforce scheduling can yield previously unknown levels of efficiency for field service delivery. Jeremy Squire, Managing Directo, FLS, Fast Lean Smart explains how... 

The convergence between field force scheduling and vehicle tracking is not something on the horizon, it has already arrived - and with precise arrival times now offered by private car hire and delivery companies such as Uber, DPD, IKEA and Amazon, customers are already expecting the same for field service appointments and anything less may be perceived as poor service. It is fast becoming a necessity for field service companies to both realise and embrace this as essential to achieve.

At FLS, Fast Lean Smart, we specialise in scheduling and route optimisation solutions and our customers are increasingly interested in this convergence of technologies. I believe it is vital for most field service companies to consider this and let’s take a moment to look at both how and why you should be doing likewise.

If live GPS location coordinates are provided to FLS VISITOUR, our leading scheduling technology, we can re-plan your engineer job schedules based on exactly where they are in their current route rather than wait until a confirmation of arrival from their mobile app.

The system could be configured to automatically re-optimise the rest of the day ‘real-time’ for engineers based on the location updates. This might enable additional jobs, highlight where an SLA or appointment slot will be missed and optionally remove lower priority jobs from the schedule unless overtime is approved.

[quote float="left"]With the convergence of these technologies and capabilities, there really has been no better opportunity to enrich the profitability of your business whilst achieving happier engineers and happier customers[/quote]Many service operations, however, decide against this level of fluidity for their engineer’s day and therefore might choose to lock the next jobs or even the whole day and only make changes in exceptional circumstances and under the control of a planner. This is particularly true for tasks which require the engineer to have parts or for appointments that require preparation.

What is certain, however, is that knowing issues with the current plan in the back office is key for customer service and engineer welfare, therefore the more accurate this is the better. The driving durations used by the scheduling algorithm are also very important to achieve this objective and at FLS we use actual average drive speeds for each road segment according to time of day for pre-planning. Variable traffic congestion is a severe issue in some areas, therefore, we also use a real-time feed of current traffic to optimise during the day. With this combination, drive durations are as accurate as we have all become accustomed to when using TomTom Live or Google Navigation on our smartphones.

It requires this high level of accuracy to enable reliable automated messaging to customers with the refined time of arrival for engineers. However, combining GPS location data in the FLS VISITOUR scheduling system also enables our FLS Customer Portal which can be accessed via a URL in the arrival time message and for your customers to track the arrival of the engineer from the previous job on a map, Uber style! (no more ’Where’s my engineer?’ calls.)

This capability has now become the goal of almost every field service provider we speak with, not just  B2C, and whilst currently a USP we can expect it will increasingly become the norm.

Of course, all this has terrific benefits for the service provider as well as the customer.

Maximising productivity and minimising cost in the field whilst giving good service (right engineer with the right parts etc) is a standard desire for everyone, however, with the convergence of these technologies and capabilities, there really has been no better opportunity to enrich the profitability of your business whilst achieving happier engineers and happier customers.

To deliver this level of performance and customer excellence, integrating engineer tracking is essential and there is an answer for every circumstance; a vehicle telematics system, a low-cost GPS cigarette lighter tracker or a phone/tablet app such as FLS MOBILE.

The days of customers waiting blindly for an engineer to arrive are on the way out and field service companies must adapt to these new expectations swiftly to avoid being seen as outdated and uncompetitive. The good news is that the solutions are already available - it is just a case of connecting the dots - and FLS VISITOUR is a solution that allows you to do just that.

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TomTom Telematics has launched a new version of its fleet management Software-as-a-Service solution WEBFLEET 3.3 which allows fleet operators to review combined vehicle data from different sources in one easy-to-use interface.

The WEBLEET Plugin functionality allows a third party to generate notifications within WEBFLEET to draw the user’s attention to an event or a specific vehicle. This will highlight, for example, when a cold chain trailer temperature is out of range or a vehicle has maintenance issues which need to be addressed.

Using the company's award-winning WEBFLEET.connect open API functionality, the software enables flexible and easy back-office integrations to bring all information into one system.

[quote float="left"]For customers with bespoke software needs, this means faster and easier fleet control[/quote]For customers with bespoke software needs, this means faster and easier fleet control, integrating such services as safety cameras, temperature monitoring, alcohol testing, routing optimisation or ERP information within their WEBFLEET management system.

The technology is already being used by mutual customers of TomTom Telematics and VisionTrack to view vehicle camera footage directly from WEBFLEET.   

"Our customers who also use TomTom Telematics can now pull up incident footage instantly and review via the WEBFLEET interface, without having to open up the VisionTrack software independently," said Richard Lane, Commercial Director at VisionTrack.  "Having access to both visual proof and telematics data gives the clearest picture possible and helps to mitigate insurance costs. We’re excited to bring this new partnership to our mutual customers."

Beverley Wise, Director UK & Ireland for TomTom Telematics, added: “This new capability gives our customers an easier user experience, with faster and more convenient access to the management information they need to make smarter decisions.

"Having real-time third-party information in one interface makes WEBFLEET the hub for optimal fleet control."

TomTom Telematics has launched a new version of its fleet management Software-as-a-Service solution WEBFLEET 3.3 which allows fleet operators to review combined vehicle data from different sources in one easy-to-use interface.

The WEBLEET Plugin functionality allows a third party to generate notifications within WEBFLEET to draw the user’s attention to an event or a specific vehicle. This will highlight, for example, when a cold chain trailer temperature is out of range or a vehicle has maintenance issues which need to be addressed.

Using the company's award-winning WEBFLEET.connect open API functionality, the software enables flexible and easy back office integrations to bring all information into one system.

For customers with bespoke software needs, this means faster and easier fleet control, integrating such services as safety cameras, temperature monitoring, alcohol testing, routing optimisation or ERP information within their WEBFLEET management system.

The technology is already being used by mutual customers of TomTom Telematics and VisionTrack to view vehicle camera footage directly from WEBFLEET.

"Our customers who also use TomTom Telematics can now pull up incident footage instantly and review via the WEBFLEET interface, without having to open up the VisionTrack software independently," said Richard Lane, Commercial Director at VisionTrack.  "Having access to both visual proof and telematics data gives the clearest picture possible and helps to mitigate insurance costs. We’re excited to bring this new partnership to our mutual customers."

Beverley Wise, Director UK & Ireland for TomTom Telematics, added: “This new capability gives our customers an easier user experience, with faster and more convenient access to the management information they need to make smarter decisions.

"Having real-time third-party information in one interface makes WEBFLEET the hub for optimal fleet control."

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