Heavy Duty Trucking, April 2019

HDT APRIL 2019 50 WWW TRUCKINGINFO COM Theres a lot of information coming in from various platforms and devices and it all needs to be connected to the back office says Adam Bruttell vice president of sales and marketing North America for Mix Telematics Companies can put this data to work to do things such as optimize routes calculate cost per mile generate payroll data for employees track maintenance and evaluate vehicle utilization Kevin Aries global product success Verizon Connect says integrating the mobile systems with the back office helps companies with driver retention by improving work experience and communication for drivers In his view an integrated mobile platform should help in a number of areas from dispatch to collecting form data in the field Not all data has to be integrated into the back office or not in real time at least Mobile services that do need such integration include ELD data vehicle driver routing applications mobile forms and vehicle trailer location and status information But fleets might consider other app data optional according to Roni Taylor senior vice president FAI strategy and business development at Spireon For example there are mobile apps that can provide direct feedback to drivers on their speed The same information can be sent to a field supervisor in the form of an alert or report but it would be optional to capture that speeding data and integrate it with a back office system But some fleets might want that data in their system to be used as part of a company safety initiative How mobile platforms augment your current system Once mobile data has been integrated into a companys transportation management system it can be put to work in a number of ways TMS providers generally offer modules for integrating data for specific purposes Mobile communication and telematics vendors also offer services for analyzing raw data collected from vehicles Aries says mobile platforms make a companys enterprise system more robust by providing ways to tackle new problems as businesses grow They also MOBILE PLATFORMS A mobile platform allows fleets to put the data generated by the vehicle and driver to work in monitoring efficiency navigation and other details Devices plugged into the vehicles onboard computer can serve as the gateway between the truck and the back office PHOTOS JIM BEACH AT OMNITRACS CONNECT 2019help by providing greater levels of automation and efficiency The mobile data can give company managers new ways of looking at things Penkethman says They add additional context or dimension that helps managers find quality and process issues While much of the mobile data fleets collect involve location and status Taylor says such data can be integrated into enterprise systems for non telematics needs For example second order analytics can provide insights into risk or correlation of events between telematics data and data from other systems That analysis can be used to establish vehicle maintenance schedules or transportation flow analysis Witty notes his company has always worked with trucking companies and third party providers to meld the data from their mobile platforms with their existing systems and applications The next step is to open up the platform for fleets that have developed their own applications The element of our platform that will become valuable is letting fleets and third parties put their apps on there to provide the platform that allows everything to communicate