Data integration: the super truth

Brisbane, September 6^th 2017. David Gladding, Global Sales & Marketing Director at Chevin is full of energy. On the 7^th, Jackie Kirk, APAC Regional Sales Manager and himself will be hosting the opening event of their new offices in a landmark building in Brisbane. The perfect opportunity to ask David some questions about Chevin’s views on data, fleet management efficiency and mobility.

The maturity of fleet management tools is at a good level, says David. Good telematics tools are widely available, driver behaviour is being increasingly measured, the fleet managers are taking preventative maintenance serious and everyone recognizes that using a vehicle efficiently has a direct impact on the cost of the fleet and eventually on the profitability of the client. One questions remains however : how to consolidate data that come from different sources? David continues: most of the fleet tools are not integrated, which results not only in a double or triple entry of identical data, but which creates inefficiencies that potentially has a big impact on compliance and idle time. “My favorite example is that of the blue light fleet : ambulances need to be up and running all the time, but if the defibrillator is not working, the entire asset becomes idle.” Similarly, Fleet Managers need to focus on how they integrate the information that comes from various tools and providers in order to measure the efficiency and the cost of the entire fleet.

Legislations and regulations for professional fleet users are continuously becoming more complex, resulting in more data that needs to be recorded by the end user and processed by the client. Paper records should be a thing of the past, is David’s comment. Paper is a risk, not only for the client’s efficiency but also for compliance. He advises the Fleet Manager to implement digital tools to pull data from the user of the vehicle and push data requests to the user.

Integrated data interrogation tools have an additional benefit : the end user can register all sorts of events, such as defects on the vehicle. In this case, the availability of spare parts can be checked, an order for a part can be generated and repair appointments can be booked. No more human intervention, immediate action and reduced idle time for the vehicle.

Chevin has a down to earth view on the evolution of mobility in the professional fleet arena. No one denies that mobility is crucial, says David, but the reality is that the support structures are not ready yet, not only from an infrastructure point of view, but also from a complexity point of view. With electric, connected and self-driving vehicles will come a lot more data to be processed and more tools to be integrated. He advises the Fleet Manager however to start preparing now and look for solutions that interrogate and integrate data.

Chevin has been helping fleet owners and other players in the market for over 27 years now and is delivering solutions in over 180 countries. David is enthusiastic about the future: next to its geographical expansion (recent opening in Jordan, German office to come), the company will continue preparing for global expansion. David takes a breathe: Chevin is growing, but locations is not the only key word. We are ready to deliver solutions to the customer that help them prepare for the future : with more focus on mobile interfaces and open API (connectivity between different tools), we hope to fill the gaps in today’s fleet management and increase our clients’ efficiency.

Image: Chevin