The global market for commercial vehicle fleet management has expanded by almost twice the value in the last few years. By 2028, this market could surpass $24 billion USD, becoming a juggernaut in the transportation and logistics fields. Considering the impact of this rapid growth, leveraging big data to track information through automotive telematics properly makes sense. Such innovations shift the power of decision-making back into the hands of stakeholders, and solutions like Wialon are leading the charge.
What is the idea behind big data in telematics?
Automotive telematics collects crucial information about how a car is driven during certain stops or even the ambient temperature around the vehicle during transportation. With so much information flowing from sensors and intake devices, the resulting data pool can quickly overwhelm a platform.
Big data innovations find a way to safely collect information, analyze it for the benefit of companies, and provide predictive analytics about future unforeseen potential issues. This collection may include checking internal hypotheses to be further investigated. The goal is to leverage data to improve operational efficiency, driver safety, compliance, and any other points of interest the fleet management company may have.
How big data transforms fleet management
Big data is crucial to longevity in any modern industry. Over 402.74 million terabytes of data are created each and every day. We live in an era where data is the currency of international exchanges, and fleet management must keep up in order to properly evolve. How does this big data change the world of automotive telematics?
Productivity gains
First and foremost, empowering fleet managers with real-time data about current vehicles ensures smoother proactive efficiencies. Operations staff can identify patterns of behaviors and even ensure maintenance needs are addressed long before they become a serious financial concern.
Consider a local last-mile delivery company. With telematics vehicle tracking, fleet managers can identify underutilized vehicles or discover new patterns of excessive idling. Since idling unnecessarily burns fuel without covering any distance, reducing it directly impacts fuel waste, improving productivity and time allocation. Such insights reduce fuel waste and improve productivity and time allocation.
Wialon offers ready-made eco-driving templates to help fleet managers assess driver behavior and promote safer, more efficient driving practices. These templates are based on a deep analysis of various driving parameters and provide insights into how driving habits impact fuel consumption, vehicle wear, and overall road safety. In summary, Wialon’s ready-made eco-driving templates provide a comprehensive and easy-to-use solution for fleet managers and simplify the process of monitoring, evaluating, and improving eco-driving habits across the fleet.
Fuel consumption optimization
The price of gas is elastic. It is based mainly on geopolitical issues, stock availability, and crude oil prices, which fluctuate widely due to market pressures. This makes fuel one of the most important aspects of running any business involving fleet vehicles. The more you can manage fuel costs by optimizing your consumption, the better your bottom line.
Insights from equipment and vehicle telematics ensure fuel-saving strategies can be implemented across your business. Not only will this reduce the operational costs of maintaining your fleet, but it will also help align your business with a less impactful environmental footprint. Platforms like Wialon can highlight the vehicles performing well in fuel efficiency for a particular fleet, which may need immediate attention to improve overall fuel expenses.
Sustainability improvements
Countries like the U.S. are tracking how vehicles impact greenhouse gas emissions. In 2022, transportation accounted for the largest GHGs, at around 28% of the total emissions recorded.
The essential role of telematics solutions is to help improve sustainability while your business is uncovering new efficiencies and opportunities. Eco-friendly business practices are made more accessible when you can effectively monitor emissions, speeds, idling, and other behaviors that reduce waste and fuel consumption.
Wialon allows for pre-formatted and customized formulas that ensure greater sustainability in fleet management. The pre-formatted formula from Wialon calculates how much CO2 is emitted from each vehicle based on mileage, allowing operators to view real time data related to carbon footprint expenditures.
However, you can customize this formula based on other factors. For example, if you want to track engine hours as well as mileage to represent idling, cold trucks are a solid instance where you would want to know how long the engine runs to maintain temperature-sensitive inventory like frozen foods or pharmaceuticals.
Telematics hardware recommendations
Big data provides the opportunity to see which hardware trackers and sensors are most frequently applied across the user base of telematics solutions. For example, based on this data, Wialon allows for automatically creating popular sensors. When adding a new unit or editing an existing one, Wialon suggests commonly used sensors for that device type. Users can simply select from the recommended list of sensors and start using them. This simplifies the setup for new users and saves time for experienced ones. The feature supports the most popular sensors, like mileage, ignition, and voltage.
Safety through connectivity
Another crucial aspect of using big data for everything from telematics in car insurance to optimizing school bus driver routes is the idea of safety in functionality. An extensive array of interconnected devices interacting in real-time ensures driver, passenger(s), and asset safety.
Real-time data allows fleet managers to identify undesirable driver behaviors quickly. Concerns like excessive speeding, harsh braking, or rapid acceleration are more accessible to track, and new patterns are revealed to address them. This safety awareness effectively reduces risk in key industries like transportation, logistics, agriculture, construction, EMS, etc.
Not only does automotive telematics reduce driver danger, but also to other vehicles on the road. Automation in using such technologies is why autonomous vehicles are on the rise. Fleet telematics allows operational management at a global scale, providing teams with testing, protocol monitoring, and adaptation in real-time through all kinds of sensors. After all, wouldn’t everyone appreciate a safer road environment?
The future of fleet digitalization
Telematics is reshaping how companies of all kinds are viewing fleet management. Data-driven decision-making that replaced basic GPS monitoring tools is opening doors to greater fuel efficiency, higher standards of safety, and better steps toward a more sustainable future.
Even better, solutions like Wialon encourage collaboration. This telematics platform alone has a network of over 2,700 partners, empowering smaller businesses to unlock new opportunities without the massive investment usually required by a 100% customized solution. You can expect big data solutions like Wialon to begin utilizing AI and ML (machine learning) on a larger scale to improve all the benefits realized by so many companies and managers.
