Teletrac Navman survey indicates related investment spend at top of transport firm’s list
The cost reduction imperative is so strong in transport and logistic it is driving telematics investment to the top of company spending lists, IT firm Teletrac Navman reports on findings from its latest survey on the subject.
According to the 2017 Telematics Benchmark Report: Australian Transport Edition survey, 94 per cent of respondents plan to invest heavily in hardware and technologies for their business in the next year, ahead of other planned investments, such as training talent and improving customer experience.
This occurs as 88 per cent of transport businesses have either already implemented telematics or are planning to next year.
The figures dovetail with 51 per cent of companies nominating ‘managing costs’ as the leading challenge they face, more than twice that of each of the other responses.
Growing revenue at 23 per cent, minimising vehicle/driver incidents (20 per cent), business expansion (19 per cent), regulatory changes (18 per cent), customer retention (16 per cent), and risk management (15 per cent), were the rest.
“The transport sector continues to have a driver shortage, while the Australian freight task is becoming more demanding.” Andrew Rossington, vice president of Transtech for Teletrac Navman, says.
“Providing maximum cost efficiencies by investing in the parts of the fleet that maximise productivity is a must.”
Of the sorts of services companies value, vehicle tracking (82 per cent), speed tracking (74 per cent), distance travelled (74 per cent), driver hours (57 per cent), maintenance (53 per cent), idling (46 per cent) and driver performance (45 per cent) are the most used features.
Fatigue monitoring is the number one technology, at 61 per cent, that fleet managers are considering.
And the report identifies something of an IT arms trend occurring,
“Transport operators are aware that staying competitive requires a constant analysis of market trends and operational efficiencies, along with an allocation of funds to keep up with demand.” It says.
Thus 53 per cent will invest in upgrading the fleet, 44 per cent on integrating technologies an systems 36 per cent on implementing technology for regulatory compliance and 32 per cent expanding the fleet.
Only 6 per cent had no investment planned.
Interestingly, there was barely a playing-card’s thickness between short-haul and long-haul providers with 42 per cent of the former and 41 per cent of the latter expecting to gain the biggest growth opportunities from the investment, dwarfing the remaining transport sectors, such as parcels, courier or fuel transport.
More generally, transport has many concerns across the board where telematics solutions are sought:
- Fuel (57 per cent), payroll (56 per cent), equipment/vehicle maintenance (30 per cent) and vehicle/equipment purchases (23 per cent) are the largest expenses for businesses
- Fatigue is the biggest compliance concern for fleet managers (70 per cent), beating out vehicle maintenance (59 per cent) and speed management (37 per cent)
- Businesses that implemented telematics say they’re better able to prevent speeding (58 per cent), manage fatigue (39 per cent), assess driver behaviour (30 per cent) and improve productivity (23 per cent).
In Australia, 107 who indicated that their primary industry was transportation and are based here provided the data, out of a global survey of 1,200 fleet operations and fleet management professionals globally.
This report follows one on telematics’ use in the construction industry that shows a similar bullish trend.
The full report can be accessed here.