Telematics devices have transformed the fleet and transportation industries in the last ten years. Geotab, a top global telematics provider, has increased its market share by about 40% since 2020, and has more than 3 million commercial fleet subscribers alone.
Solutions like these are incredibly impactful from a risk and safety perspective. But as these are traditionally operational products, gaining access to the right risk insights proves to be an extreme challenge for safety professionals.
In our recent webinar, our experts discussed a handful of challenges that telematics devices present, from messy, overwhelming data, to difficulties benchmarking and comparing this data across different systems. System fatigue alone is a widespread problem that many teams face, where it takes too much manpower, time, energy and just too many steps for safety managers to maximize the true value of this data long-term. Over time, a team’s engagement and overall buy-in tends to drop off.
To overcome these challenges, we share six strategies that revolutionize how fleets can leverage their telematics solutions to elevate their safety programs.
6 Ways to Make Telematics Data Work for Your Fleet Safety Program
1. Normalize Messy Data
There are three steps businesses can take to successfully clean up their telematics data.
- Set minimum data requirements. It’s critical to have a clear answer to the question, “what data do we need, and why do we need it?” Ensure that your team can meet these minimum requirements and that they satisfy your risk management needs.
- Apply consistent logic. This is particularly critical if you use multiple telematics and other data sources. Establishing comprehensive and cohesive logic for driving events that may vary across devices will greatly increase the accuracy of your insights and interventions.
- Properly identify drivers. Establish a way for your drivers to identify themselves when they enter the vehicle. This ensures that you’re matching the right behaviors to the right driver in the case that a vehicle is used by more than more employee.
2. Distill The Data Down to What You Need
Because of the large volume of data that telematics devices produce, safety managers must find a way to identify the events or behaviors that are most likely to cause safety issues. Combing through various email alerts and reports makes it difficult for teams to remain consistent and focus on the right things.
Dive Deeper in Our Free Guide: 6 Telematics Challenges and How Leading Fleets Overcome Them
3. Be Selective and Clear about What Data You Use
As these devices evolve, they will likely provide more data that isn’t attributed to the driver’s actual behavior behind the wheel. This may include sensor information about an attached trailer, a door opening, etc. It’s important to ensure you can easily pull out and identify the behaviors that can be utilized to help improve driver performance, avoiding the data isn’t attributable to crashes or other safety-related events.
4. Make Your Telematics Devices and Data Comparable
Establishing consistent terminology and logic is a critical factor in successfully leveraging telematics within your safety program. This ensures that your team is consistent when calculating things like speed, mileage or trips – avoiding any personal bias toward how the data is translated.
5. Embed the Data into Your Processes
In order to avoid system fatigue, it’s important to set your team up for success to ensure that they’re more likely to interact with the data consistently. One of the best ways to do this is by making sure that all alerts, insights and interventions are occurring in one spot, removing the need for your team to log into multiple systems and compare data coming from disparate devices.
6. Link the Inputs with the Output
While it’s impossible to predict a crash, you can predict who is more likely to be involved in one. By having access to the right insights, companies can better pinpoint these drivers and intervene before an expensive claim occurs. Between behaviors, violations and claims, your company can leverage this indicating data to understand where your risk truly lies.
The Benefits of Leveraging Telematics for Fleet Risk Management
There are some very tangible benefits of telematics data that can transform your fleet safety program. By implementing these strategies, you can:
- Better retain drivers
- Proactively identify issues
- Reduce risk to secure better insurance rates
- Make communities safer
To dive deeper into the issues that telematics solutions present and the strategies above that work to combat them, download our guide, “6 Telematics Challenges and How Leading Fleets Overcome Them.” 