OviDrive: AI and Connected Fleet Management Software
Also presenting at the Sydney M15 was OviDrive, the Fleet Management software company that has now grown out of its start-up status and employs over 20 people in Europe and Australia. OviDrive has a unique view on Fleet Management and tech innovation to push the fleet industry forward: connectivity, applications, integrations, data services and automation.
Automate behavior
Ovidiu Radu, one of the founders of the company, explains what OviDrive does differently from its competitors: “The simplest way of managing a fleet is in either a spreadsheet or a database. It captures a status quo, that is manually overwritten when something changes. A more advanced tool will keep track of these changes, but still requires the Fleet Manager to act and register the action. If you were to put a web interface on top of this, you’d have some nicer screens, but they would still be simply registering data. This is where most of our competitors are, right now.”
“The OviDrive platform adds additional functionality and intelligence to this – automation if you want. Some of that automation is programmed, some of it comes from the usage of artificial intelligence. In other words, the system will learn from you, and all other users of the OviDrive platform, to make decisions on your behalf or reproduce behaviour. Let’s say you’d systematically approve a request for service or tyres for your employees; after a while, the system will auto-approve all requests that mirror the parameters of that previous behaviour. But this is just a part of it. We are applying the same technology to all other aspects of in-life management such as maximising utilisation and uptime, prescriptive service & maintenance, as well as acquisition / disposal intelligence”
Connectivity
Ovi continues: “It’s great to automate behaviour – it drastically reduces the time you’d need to spend managing your fleet – but automation needs data, so how do we get that in? OviDrive is positioned as a mobility operating system at the crossroads of data feeds, we connect all aspects of fleet management and have built a complete, end-to-end data ecosystem. We connect the car, the driver, the supply chain, all transactions and invoices, all events and incidents, in one unified system. In other words, information flows are automated and integrated through connectivity. OviDrive connects with the car any way possible: via an OBD, your telematics supplier or directly with the car’s connectivity platform. The drivers benefit from digital profiles and are connected with the system and with the car via their mobile phones. The suppliers are connected via our vendor platform. And this is the great part: the combination of connectivity and artificial intelligence allows a single FTE to manage a fully unbundled fleet upwards of 1000 cars.”
Raison d'être
“There’s obviously the fact that this industry is a data heaven,” says Ovi, “but it goes beyond AI, cloud and 5G. Firstly, we understand that Fleet Managers, many of them procurement people, have already maximised the savings and discounts from their existing supply chain, most often leasing providers and OEMs. Fleet Management professionals are now gearing up for the next summit: maximising the usage of their assets. People need tools for this – this is where OviDrive steps in.”
Ovi continues: “Optimising the usage rate of a fleet always results in reducing the fleet size and activating alternatives such as fleet pool cars. This requires a different way of fleet management, not only for day-to-day management, such as vehicle booking, but also for regulatory and taxation reasons. OviDrive connects cars with drivers as soon as they step into the car; transparency is guaranteed and reporting goes directly into major ERPs.”
Mobility-ready
The final step is mobility. “At OviDrive, we believe that our customers are their own mobility provider. We recommend our clients to optimise the potential of their own fleet first and only then, fill in the gaps with mobility solutions. This is what we mean by “mobility-ready”. Embrace technology and put solutions in place that remove the rigidity of a one-employee-one-car model.”
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