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The start point for the best source of fleet information |
I first asked Savage how the importance of tracking and telematics has changed in the past few years. Until early 2020, the need for telematics was for what he calls "hygiene factors" - foremost for safety and productivity, particularly as we all became more reliant on home deliveries and as more people entered the last mile delivery business. These companies wanted to ensure newer, less experienced drivers were operating safely and utilising the vehicle in an efficient and considered manner.
"What we experienced during the pandemic is that it allowed businesses to pause and reflect for a short period of time. They wanted to evolve their businesses. There became a much greater onus on sustainability. Companies began to ask what 'sustainability' meant for their organisation? They wanted to know how the vehicles within their fleets were operating at that point in time, how much CO2 was being emitted and how telematics could help them achieve their internal sustainability targets.
"In advance of the government mandate for 2030, this was where telematics came into play because the transition to EV is essentially a brave new world. The vehicles look similar but the way they operate and the input to operate them effectively from a human perspective are often quite different - things like harsh braking, harsh acceleration, regenerative braking - they are all slightly different behaviours, and it requires data to educate and shape them.
"How can I transition my ICE vehicles that I've been used to for the last several decades into an EV alternative? Is there an EV alternative? When should I make the transition and how much will it cost me? More importantly, in the pandemic, when the focus was on the bottom line, how much will it save me over time?
"There's a financial component to it. That's the area that continued - and is the core focus of fleets. Terminology shifts over time from sustainability to decarbonisation. So for example, I've got ICE vehicles, we've had a pandemic and now a war. I can't transition my vehicles because of component shortages - what can I do with my existing diesel and petrol vehicles to ensure they're driven more sustainably? How can I prolong the life of my vehicles through preventative maintenance, even if I'd not planned on keeping them this long."
Jarvis adds that for many Geotab customers the pandemic was positive for their businesses. He says: "Realistically, what the pandemic meant to businesses is that they couldn't get new vehicles. Fleet managers are ordering vehicles today, and they don't know when they will arrive - it could be up to 20 months.
"We're doing a lot of work with the Association of Fleet Professionals (AFP), on how to manage that, which means being more efficient, with what you've got.
"We've seen a big uptake in digitisation that didn't exist before. It gives companies the chance to have another look at reports and make them by app for example, to save time, effort and human contact. This is where Geotab fits in well with things we've been doing for many years, and some surprisingly large fleets have never considered digitising, because previously they didn't want to spend the money. Now they might have a smaller budget, but they see that spending more on the digital side helps them with cost savings overall."
Savage goes on: "Automation feeds into a cost-saving overall, but it's one of those components that delivers some of those marginal gains, by reducing the carbon footprint as fewer people are travelling around."
Jarvis believes that the shortage of vehicles resulted in Geotab pivoting from the demand of their customers, to include not only tools that helped them to make the change to electric vehicles, but also helped reduce the carbon emissions of the vehicles they've got today. He says: "As a direct fleet management customer, this is the noticeable change.
"One of the largest vehicle-owning fleets in the country used to churn their vehicles every 18 months - maybe two years. They've now got vehicles coming up to four-years old and the things that have happened in the third and fourth years of the vehicle's life are quite different to the first and second. As a result, we're seeing a bigger uptake in our digital service, maintenance, and repair products where we're providing odometer, fault codes and predictive maintenance to people managing huge fleets of expensive vehicles."
Savage is also keen to point out that it has also been about education. He says: "It is about fleets wanting to running vehicles a bit longer, while they get to grips with the various components of moving towards electrification.
"So, how the vehicles will operate once they're in a fleet, understanding the infrastructure needs and the driver education. On the vehicle electrification side, we've been relatively fortuitous as a business, as we saw the acceleration before some of our rivals. Back to 2017 or 2018, we already had platforms that helped fleet transition to electric. Through our Electric Vehicle Suitability Assessment, which analyses a fleet's unique driving profiles and patterns, to identify vehicles best suited to EV replacement.
What we really had to do in the early stages of the pandemic, was to put steroids into that to ensure that we had the biggest make and model coverage. We were reaching the market expectations, and on the operations side, continued to evolve the product for the specific niches we've mentioned.
"Whether it's last-mile delivery needs versus a utility company's needs - they might differ slightly - but it's very much data-driven. We've been evolving the product, matching the data sets to the requirements of those specific verticals, let's say."
Jarvis goes on to highlight the fact that Geotab's products are now more integrated than ever into their client's businesses. He says: "That's one of the our strengths, we work best when the data is valued by the business and deeply integrated. We've launched a product, where we're pre-integrating with some business data software, to make it even easier for our customers.
"The big change looking at the UK market, is that people have moved from doing the bare minimum to using the data and all the information we get from a vehicle to influence how they run their business. That has allowed us to pay attention to issues like carbon emissions of vehicles, and then using that strong data science to take information from 3 million connected vehicles and make that relevant to a UK fleet manager.
"Our customers are specifically using data to decide where they're putting their charging infrastructure and how they're coaching their drivers. It's about safety - taking a data-led approach and integrating that data into the rest of the business."
Savage believes this is all about applied products for the evolution of the Fleet Manager. "They are much more comfortable with the use of technology, the understanding of data, and they're really looking at the insights that data can provide. Rewind five years ago and there was a fear that data was a "Big Brother" or could lead to paralysis. Previously a business decision would be made on a little bit of data insight, a bit of gut instinct, and a little bit of experience. Decisions now are exclusively driven by the data, and if you look at some of the largest organisations in the world, who have large fleets, they are data-driven companies. That's why they use telematics and rely on that data to inform business decision makers.
Geotab's products are also equalling welcome savings in these difficult times. Jarvis tells me of a customer who has made a saving, just by reducing the idling of their fleet. He says: "By using our Green Fleet Dashboard, the company was saving 8% on fuel costs, which with its fleet of 300 vehicles, meant a saving of £60,000 a year."
Savage explains that if they're talking about sustainability and carbonisation, large fleets want to get an idea of what the savings could be if they transition to electric. "They want to get an idea almost before they start to do it, to build up that internal business case. This is a significant cost because they must put in infrastructure. We've run a couple of Electric Vehicle Suitability Surveys with Enterprise, across 91,000 of its vehicles. This looked at various vehicle types and the savings they would recognise not just from a financial perspective, but from a carbon emissions standpoint as well. I think that really helps build the business case around decarbonising fleets - which is important - but also the economic arguments that now stand behind it."
Savage is guarded about new products, but he says: "We have been working towards becoming the de facto 'platform' for the last decade, and that is the direction we continue to go in, almost being an agnostic data pool. Brands are becoming agnostic - it's about what you can deliver.
Jarvis adds: "We want to be the cornerstone for the operating system of the connected car and that's where we're really investing our time and effort - working with OEMs making sure they're providing data of the quality that their customers need. So, our customers don't need aftermarket technology to do that and whether that is working with end customers, leasing customers, insurance companies - making sure that data adds value for our customers.
"By investing heavily in our front end - being a first choice open-source platform provider is certainly what we're trying to be."
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