On 27th April, business representatives and journalists from the IoT sphere were invited to London for a round table to discuss Wialon, a IoT telematic fleet management system developed by Gurtam. With Chief Officer Aliaksandr Kuushynau presenting, attendees were given a rundown of the issues faced by fleet owners and what Wialon aims to address, before getting a personal Q&A with him, with questions raised on the future of IoT telematics in the automotive and fleet management sphere.
First, some numbers. Wialon currently has 3.5 million connected vehicles in its platform, with Kuushynau stating that “not a single one of those connected vehicles would ever get lost.” That’s because that is what Winlon is about, keeping track of vehicles in your fleet. Just like many laymen might have heard the term telematic when they are trying to search around for cheaper car insurance, this is that on a broader scale – used to track everything from HGVs, to cars, bikes and even heavy machinery.
It does this through GPS monitoring with telematics solutions as flespi and GPS-Trace used alongside Wialon’s IoT platform to not only track, but provide data about those assets via a Cloud-based platform. These insights can tell about routes used for a vehicle, speed, temperature of a vehicle, driver behaviour, maintenance checks and more to help optimise a company’s productivity.
This especially helps companies whose businesses or large value assets are assigned to their vehicles or machinery so that they can either optimise them, keep them safe from theft, or avoid downtime by knowing when to schedule repairs. Because data is fed through the Cloud, AI can also be utilised in more novel, but serious, asset protection – for instance, recognising and alerting a driver who has fallen asleep at the wheel.
But along with the real-time alerts, it is the data gathered from the sensors where insights can lead to optimisation taking place to tackle some of the most pressing issues of the day: climate change and rising energy costs. Usually, when you think of initiatives to optimise or save energy, you might be led to believe these are reserved for the big companies that can afford to utilise them. “Sometimes it might seem only bigger companies are entitled to AI,” Kuushynau said. “But our work with SME’s gives the same business intelligence to them that bigger companies have.”
Seeing as how climate change is a global issue, there needs to be cohesion in tackling it. This means small companies have just as big part in it as the bigger organisations. SMEs make up 90% of business worldwide, according to a 2022 study by SME climate hub. So with companies like Wialon providing fleet management to this base of smaller companies around the world, and with many being in control of vehicles that run on fossil fuels, means that the insights it can offer – such as poor driving or routes taken, overkill on refrigeration of goods, vehicle idling due to traffic – can lead to optimisation processes or strategies that in turn help these companies reduce fuel consumption and thus emissions. And although there is a price tag to going cleaner, with rising energy and fuel costs, it may soon prove more prudent to spend now to understand how to optimise and bring in savings later, less energy costs continue to rise or stay high.
Being represented in 150 countries, the company is in a position to be a part of the change to introduce IoT and telematics in more and more companies and potentially usher in practices that can help companies reach net zero.
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