Let the device-acquired data helps on your decision making
GPS tracking devices acquire data all the time. Although the hardware manufacturers might limit the amount of it that is going to be visible, most of the generated parameters, or at least the main ones, are going to be accessible. You might think, how does this data can help me? What is the right use of all the generated information?
As in most of the business or personal solutions that we use in our day-to-day life, where APPS and search engines gather data about us, fleet management and transport telematics follow the same principle. It is well known that across all industries, historical gathered data is a powerful tool to make future business decisions. The transport segment can particularly benefit from this and use the solutions for more than improving the driver’s safety or saving fuel cost.
Find now some of the most important benefits you can get by including data analytics into your business:
1. Drivers behavior monitoring
Resting time of drivers is extremely important, and ensuring it must be on your checklist. The data acquired by the device, in the long run, can help you to understand and optimize the number of hours that a driver needs to rest (always following the legislation applicable). By correlating the resting time with other important GPS-device generated information, such as harsh braking, harsh acceleration, or speeding, you might get very good insights about the driver´s performance. Drivers tend to increase the number of errors when the resting time has not been adequate or they work extra hours, so data gathered can help companies to improve fleet’s driving performance and create specific improvement goals for each person.
Tip 💡: When choosing your transport telematics partners, make sure their solution (hardware and software) include the right set of data analytic tools and reports to get the most value from those insights.
2. Reduce the cost of maintenance.
The standard manufacturer service schedule just based on dates or certain mileage in plenty of cases is not efficient anymore but not doing any service to your fleet is not an option either. Here is where transport telematics data analytics enters in action.
If your installed GPS-tracker can read error codes, you should take advantage out of it!
Nowadays, plenty of GPS devices can be connected to the vehicle’s engine CPU and read error codes that might appear. Using this kind of solution enables companies to identify specific areas where the units might require maintenance, service or even spare part replacing. Analysing data on previous part-breakage or ECU errors can help to understand why they happened and more importantly, understand if they could be avoided and take proper actions to improve in the future the fleet operation and extend the working life of the vehicles.
Tip 💡: Be sure that your Hardware and Fleet Management System can generate alerts of potentially dangerous situations before they happen.
3. Consider the number of parameters you will choose to send to your tracking platform.
The number of Hardware-generated parameters that you send to your system will directly affect your M2M costs. On most GPS trackers, the size of each parameter ranges from 1 to 2 Bytes. It might seem small, but the accumulation of a big number of them and frequent reporting to the tracking platform might end up on huge data consumption. It is important to pay attention while configuring a GPS device since M2M data consumption bills are the easiest ones to increase during the operation of your GPS-Tracking or Fleet Management service!
Tip 💡: Make multiple tests before deciding which parameters you need and only send the ones that are relevant for your business.