Fuel savings, early warning of vehicle component defects, efficient routes and times, improvement of driving habits and safety are among the benefits gained from the intelligent use of telematics data in fleets or commercial vehicles, which have a direct impact on production or indicators of a company.

And this intelligent use of data is possible with telematics, which allows us to see and analyze beyond what a GPS usually provides.

“Telematics is a technology that is integrated into the vehicle’s computer and pulls all the information out of it, and this data is pure gold for businesses because it allows them to make business decisions that I didn’t see before, for example, I can know how much time is wasted in idling a vehicle,” said Andrés Maya Naranjo, Geotab Partner Account Manager for Latin America.

Geotab is an engineering company developing IoT (Internet of Things), telematics and data analytics solutions, founded 22 years ago in Canada. They are world leaders in vehicle telematics as they have more than three and a half million (3,500,000) connected vehicles worldwide from 44,000 companies in 130 countries, including Ecuador. These numbers are their endorsement to consider themselves leaders, they say.

Andrés Maya was the Geotab speaker at Prologitec 2023the expo and meeting the most outstanding logistics and foreign trade in Latin America, according to the organizers of this meeting What happened in Guayaquil?in this month of June.

In this appointment, where international and national exhibitors were present, Maya referred to the business success stories world who have implemented telematics in their fleetwith tangible results. There he explained the advantages that telematics have today.

One of the success stories he presented was that of a food and beverage company, which with telematics had 28% less battery replacement on the highway, 12% less telephone and road costs, 9% less labor savings and a 3% reduction in total volume of batteries replaced only in the predictive maintenance part of batteries in a fleet of more than 80,000 vehicles, where the specific aim was to replace the battery three weeks before the final failure, thanks to the system’s early warning with the application of telematics.

Maya attended an interview with THE UNIVERSEin which he explained in detail what telematics is for and which sectors are impacting or benefiting the most.

He said the application of this technology is for people or companies with fleets ranging from one vehicle to more than 300,000 vehicles. AND You don’t need to be a specialist or technology expert to analyze Geotab’s data.

“We deliver reporting and technology that is constantly evolving and evolving at the same time. big facts and artificial intelligence (AI) to automate all this information and that we don’t even need a person who specializes in technology to analyze it and implement policies and processes,” says Maya.

One of the substantial improvements that can occur in companies, which is usually not visible to the naked eye, is improving driving behaviour, which saves fuel.

“I can know (with telematics) how much idling wastes a vehicle. Idling is the practice of drivers not turning off the vehicle while it is parked and wastes huge amounts of fuel. An hour of idling in a heavy truck can consume a liter of diesel, so those are the hidden costs that companies often cannot oversee,” says Maya.

So they are the strategic allies of people or companies that manage fleets. Among their customers, they have renowned international companies in all sectors: mining, mass consumption, delivery or parcel companies, in the forestry area, in the last mile, among others. They work with all sectors that have fleets, from a sedan to a van or from a small vehicle to a tractor-trailer and also with electric vehicles.

How is the company’s presence in Ecuador?

In Ecuador and around the world, we work through partners local (partners), those who have a direct relationship with customers. We stand behind as manufacturers. The partners They have all the local support, the knowledge of the specifics of each country helps each of the customers in all their after-sales services to improve their indicators, to have best practices and to advise them on technological changes, Maya responds to EL UNIVERSO.

“Hiring our partners locally can deliver a lot of efficiency: fuel savings, implementation with the data we provide of strategies and policies that can, for example, reduce idle speed; start improving drivers’ driving behavior in a safer way; Policies that make it possible to improve the sustainability of vehicles. And each of these policies, from the data that I provide to support those policies, begins to reduce costs and increase the availability of the vehicles and the mileage or use that I make of them,” explains the Geotab Partner Account Manager out of Latin America. (Geotab Latam).

They have cases of people who only own a truck or vehicle and have opted for telematics in their business or livelihood. They are referred to as man-truck companies, but also cases of small, medium and large companies that have seen the opportunity to reduce costs in the supply chain in the intelligent use of telematics data.

Our facts and figures serve all companies and are very easy to analyze, download. You don’t have to be a techie to use our super-friendly platform. You can use it anywhere you have internet access and have an internet browser, you can view the information live.

How much does production or fleet performance improve on average in companies?

I give examples. Companies that have a fuel economy policy with strategies such as reducing idling, improving driving habits, controlling speeds above 80 km/h, improving routes so that vehicles take shorter routes, using the vehicle only for work have a reduction of at least 10% in fuel and more depending on each company.

What other news can help the user?

With those three and a half million connected vehicles, we can perform gigantic analyzes that we now lend to our customers and with which we can, for example, predict up to two weeks in advance when a battery will fail.

Saving me a battery failure means I don’t have to send a tow truck to pick up my vehicle stranded on the road or have my entire delivery schedule postponed, so that’s a huge benefit, all this with the theme of data.

We also have integrations with cameras that have artificial intelligence (AI). For example, a camera with artificial intelligence monitors behavior both outside and in the car. In the car, it can check whether the driver has a microsleep, whether the driver is looking at the mobile phone while driving, whether he is distracted while looking to the side… It warns the driver and at the same time, in real time, a central monitoring system warns for the driver to change their behavior and drive safer apart from the safety issue of being able to see what is happening outside the vehicle.

The advantage that the AI ​​has is that it does the work itself at the moment the event is viewed, because before there were cameras that just recorded and only after something bad happened did you go to see what happened in history. This is more proactive, it alerts both the driver and the monitoring center at the same time it happens.

Are the costs affordable?

It is highly modular, you can start with a basic solution where if you focus on fuel cost management strategies the solution will pay for itself.

There are other problems that are not seen in the short term. For example, when you drive less aggressively, brake less and make sharp turns, when you do not drive at high speeds, the risk of accidents decreases. You have fewer accidents per year. In addition, car parts last longer. She sees that the tires, the brake pads, the filters last longer, and they are all costs that you see after six months of the year, aside from fuel, Maya replies.

Geotab is a Canadian company that is 100% focused on improving the technology in both hardwarethat connects to vehicles in a non-invasive way, as in softwarethe platform people look at on the internet, which analyzes the information and automatically provides reports to make business decisions.

In Ecuador there are three authorized Geotab distributors. And thousands of vehicles are already connected to this network, in different industries or industries such as food and beverages, heavy and light loads, the financial sector, mining, pharmaceuticals, leasing, logistics operators, distribution, etc.

Benefits of telematics