What sort of productivity gains and cost-reductions might they expect to achieve?

Chosen wisely and implemented effectively, telematics brings the potential to significantly increase productivity and reduce costs through efficiencies.

In the mobile workforce arena there is no other single technology that can deliver these at the same time.

Case studies detailing the benefits of telematics are plentiful and the technology is well-proven at delivering significant bottom line profit gains and giving a prompt return on investment.

At a basic level, the cost savings start with a sat-nav unit directing a fleet via the most efficient routes.

This is not to be underestimated as journey time saving can reach 15% when combined with the best congestion-busting live traffic information-routing technology, such as TomTom’s HD Traffic Live.

The fewer the miles travelled, the less time spent in traffic, increasing driver productivity and reducing fuel usage. It’s also means less wear and tear on your vehicles.

However, the real productivity gains are to be made from knowing exactly where your vehicles are at any moment by simply glancing at a screen.

Known as ‘fleet visibility’, it arms the fleet manager with the information needed to quickly identify the right person with the right skills and right tools to get to a job.

This removes the need to ring round to find out where drivers are and saves everyone’s time.

The resulting quicker response times have immediate benefits if a fleet is tied to service level agreements (SLA).

One of our clients has seen response times drop from an average of 75 minutes to 15 minutes.

The net result has been huge growth in customer satisfaction in addition to the financial implications of achieving the SLA targets.

This job dispatch element of telematics is further enhanced when combined with job scheduling, offering the scope to pre-load a day’s work on to a driver’s PDA workflow.

With destinations already loaded, all the driver has to do is touch the screen to activate a job and report on completion to have the next job immediately allocated.

As this communication is done via GPRS in messaging format, it saves communication costs and mobile phone use is also significantly cut.

Being able to log vehicle usage automatically also offers substantial savings.

For car fleets in particular, the benefit-in-kind taxation rules demand that accurate records be kept if a company is to prove whether its fleet is made available for personal use by its employees.

All journeys can start with a request to identify if the purpose of a journey is private or business and the resulting logs can then be fed into backroom accountancy systems.

The same data can also be used to verify fuel claims and expenses for accuracy and purpose.

You mentioned duty of care. How can telematics systems help fleet managers keep on top of these obligations and ensure their drivers are safe?

Workplace health and safety regulations and duty of care (DoC) obligations have become increasingly important, especially with car and van fleets because these vehicles are viewed as working tools for business.

While, for some, DoC has either been ignored or treated as an additional unwelcome administrative burden, many companies have found addressing their legal requirements has been a blessing in disguise.

So what exactly is DoC? The law requires employers to develop health and safety (H&S) policies to minimise the risks to the health and well-being of employees while at work – this is a company’s ‘duty of care’.

In 2007, the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 made directors personally liable for ensuring employees’ safety at work and subject to jail sentences if shown to be negligent.

To be compliant, a company must be able to demonstrate it has assessed the risks its employees are vulnerable to during work hours and has established and policed a policy to minimise those risks.

This was brought to the fore by the Selby rail disaster back in February 2001.

A driver fell asleep at the wheel and drove on to the railway track, causing the derailing of an oncoming train.

The investigation revealed the driver was exhausted due to excessive working and commuting times which could have been avoided.

This incident was the start of tighter regulations on DoC to prevent such incidences happening again.

Selby exemplified the problem that while most companies are used to applying health and safety practice at the workplace, all too often the same rigour is not applied to employees driving on company business.

Fleet operators can overlook working time limits by not including the hours employees spend driving to and from jobs.

Also, service intervals might not be rigorously managed or alerts set to ensure best practice is adhered to.

Detailed logs and records need to be kept, proving a company has and maintains a policy to minimise employee risk.

In the past, fleet managers had very little technology to help them and this was an arduous job for traffic managers and drivers alike.

However, the advent of telematics means all the necessary data can be sent back and logged in a system and reports automatically generated.

Detailed logs show who was driving, how long for, how fast and whether they were braking or steering harshly.

So installing telematics on vehicles allows a company to demonstrate that it has taken due care in minimising the risk of injury and therefore reduced the risk of liability.

So, from an administrative point of view, telematics helps improve employee safety but it can also be used to help with safer driving techniques.

The £1m Department for Transport-funded Safe and Fuel Efficient Driving (SAFED) demonstration programme claims that drivers typically improve their fuel consumption by up to 10% after completing a driver training programme.

However, it is less clear how quickly these gains diminish if green, efficient driving habits aren’t reinforced and monitored.

Measuring driver performance after a course becomes an important issue to protect a business’s investment in training, but historically this been difficult.

However, with telematics, vehicle engine data and harsh steering and braking can all be recorded and assessed to complement an ongoing driver training programme.

This is likely to be further enhanced in the near future by the delivery of a live data feed to the driver to instruct them as they drive.

How can telematics help a company reduce its carbon footprint?

Going green at a time when managers are under increasing pressure to address the rising costs associated with running a vehicle fleet may seem like another in a long line of objectives to meet.

However, by saving fuel and thus reducing costs, you are also reducing your CO2 output, and thus helping reduce your operation’s carbon footprint – so the objectives are almost identical.

The key is to ensure you get the most of every drop of fuel but first you need to accurately measure how much you are using and understand how you are using it.

Telematics offers empirical recording of such data, capable of detailing in real-time how many engine revs a driver is using, how long the engine has been running while stationary and so on.

TomTom’s ecoPLUS is one such device, allowing both live and historic data to be relayed from the vehicle to the traffic office.

And as I’ve already mentioned, dynamic route guidance with live traffic information should send your vehicle by the most efficient route, slashing journey times by 15% and reducing fuel usage and CO2 emissions.

With CO2 targets becoming more and more commonplace, telematics is the best way to benchmark, implement and document a carbon footprint reducing fleet programme.

Have you found that telematics systems are being used mainly in commercial vehicles or are they also used by car fleets?

The perception is that telematics is most typically deployed in heavy haulage fleets, and it is still true that this is where you will find the highest adoption percentage by fleets.

However, this is a relatively small vehicle parc compared with the car and van sector.

In the van sector, it’s generally accepted that only 18-20% are using a tracking device while the figure is estimated to be lower among car fleet operators. However, there has been significant growth in these markets recently as the pressures for efficiency and lower costs have changed the business environment.

Most significantly, the economic downturn has forced business owners to reassess how they operate their fleets, now becoming more cost conscious with a high focus on efficiency.

That means concentrating on cost reduction and monitoring progress, and fleet consolidation has become a growing trend as firms try to rein in operating costs.

Furthermore, ‘green’ considerations and the increased emphasis on duty of care has forced fleet managers to document fuel spend, vehicle usage patterns, employee journey times and working hours and it is telematics that provides the solution.

Sales representatives, for instance, spend a great deal of time in their cars and this area of the market illustrates how telematics has infiltrated the car and van fleet market.

What they need in order to do this is a comprehensive set of records to demonstrate their compliance.

Reducing carbon footprint also requires recording what your current CO2 emissions are and monitoring the implementation of policies to cut them.

All these pressures are pushing the car and van fleets towards telematics. Once they’re there, of course, they soon realise the value of the technology.