Leveraging Telematics for Data Analytics in Logistics

At 20 billion, the telematics market value has more than doubled since 2016—and now it produces a lot of data that can be leveraged for analytics in logistics. Telematics providers offer hardware components such as road and driver behavior monitoring video dashcams, sensors, and GPS tracking to collect this data, but how do logistics managers use it?

Whether tracking trucks for route optimization, monitoring container location, or diving deeper into driver speed to ensure carbon efficiency and safety—analytics can now integrate into every aspect of logistics services providers’ experiences. And they need telematics to do it.

Manufacturers and providers of logistics telematics equipment must look for value-added services to make their devices stand out from the rest. So, let’s look at some of the main challenges of telematics in logistics and how simplifying the data analytics process can help increase client retention.

What Are the Challenges Associated With Telematics?

According to the 21st Annual Third Party Logistics Study, 98% of third-party logistics (3PLs) companies said improved data-driven decision-making is critical to future supply chain optimization. Telematics providers are helping the industry automate data collection, but their success depends on the following:

• Data quality: The accuracy and completeness of the data collected by telematics devices lead to reliable insights and decision-making. But what happens when vehicles travel through tunnels, satellites are down, or hardware updates overwrite historical data? Telematics providers with advanced analytics can support their clients with enhanced data quality, fill in missing data gaps, and ensure software backups at key moments in the drivers’ journey. 
• Privacy and security: Telematics devices gather sensitive information such as location, speed, and driving behavior. Ensuring the confidentiality and security of this data is crucial to maintaining trust with customers. Solutions such as in-house monitoring cloud servers, ISO 27001-certified data encryptions, and strict privacy policies protect clients’ data.
• Integration functionality: Telematics systems often require integration with other systems, for instance, fleet management or asset tracking tools. Providing centralized access to the data unique to your clients can help you remove the pain of integration. Look for advanced analytics providers with a single code base or tools built in-house; these allow you to customize your application features more quickly.

Provide Data Analytics With User-friendly Customizable Dashboards

Raw data alone can be overwhelming and challenging to interpret, which is where data visualization comes in. In telematics, data visualization extracts and presents diverse and rapidly increasing volumes of telematics data into visual formats such as charts, graphs, and maps. 

By using data analytics in logistics, telematics providers can turn vast data sets into easy-to-understand insights that can provide the following benefits:

• Better decision-making for your clients: Data visualization helps present complex data in a meaningful way, allowing your clients to gain deeper insights and make informed decisions.
• Identifying inefficiencies in business operations: By analyzing data such as vehicle usage and driver behavior, telematics providers can help clients optimize their processes and reduce costs.
• Increased safety: Telematics providers can use data analytics to identify safety risks and trends in driver behavior. Analyzing driving patterns—including speed, road alignment, and vehicle handling approaching corners—can determine the effects on wear and tear of tires while providing feedback to drivers to improve safety.
• Better communication: For example, visual associations between driving behavior and vehicle conditions help clients demonstrate the impacts of safe vehicle management to truckers and maintenance providers. In addition, clients can monitor the results after implementing new safety practices—providing you with clear metrics for communicating with new leads. 

By leveraging Transmetrics, telematics providers get access to an end-to-end platform that analyzes historical data and assesses the performance of logistics fleets. It provides user-friendly dashboards and reports so that telematics providers can identify new features to enhance their hardware. Similarly, with improved data quality, privacy, security, and integration functionality, your clients can optimize their operations while you increase your client retention rate. 

Interested in leveraging the latest logistics technology and upgrading your telematics? Get in touch, our team of data experts is here to help you.