How to Ensure Telematics Integration in Last Mile Logistics

If you’re in the delivery and logistics space—and particularly if you utilize telematics devices in managing your fleets—you may or may not be surprised to learn that we’re in the era of Telematics 4.0. Telematics 4.0 “signifies a shift towards intelligent, interconnected systems,” with an emphasis on enhanced levels of connectivity and the increasing use of AI and machine learning.

How much of this is hype, and how much is important context for fleet managers to be aware of it? It’s hard to give a confident answer—but what we can say with real confidence is that connectivity and visibility will only get more important as time goes on. The more customer expectations increase and cost pressures expand, the more crucial it will be to have connected systems to ensure real-time fleet and delivery visibility. 

Whether or not you want to call Telematics 4.0, you can still call it an absolute necessity in the modern fleet management game. 

The question is: how do you prioritize telematics integration in your last mile logistics processes? It starts with finding the right technology to streamline data integration.  

Telematics Integration: Connectivity Is the Name of the Game

Telematics data on its own can be hugely valuable, as anyone running a large fleet can likely tell you. From an asset management perspective, it’s great to have information on driver speed, harsh braking, cornering, and other behaviors that may need to be corrected. At the same time, it helps you to know where your assets are at any given time. This can obviously allay any concerns about asset theft, but it also helps you to be sure that your drivers are staying on track. 

That level of data is already valuable on its own, but when you increase the level of connectivity you’re working with you can get even more out of your telematics data. For instance, if you can add a driver mobile app into the mix, you can combine that real-time location data with contextual information about the driver’s status, what job they’re going to, which jobs have already been completed, and much more. 

The key here is to ensure that the telematics system and the driver mobile application are connected—meaning that each one is sharing data with either—and that both are connected to a larger system: either your telematics software or your last mile delivery solution.

In this way, you can both gather data and centralize it in the place where it will have the most value. This sets you down the path of creating a single source of truth for your fleet management and last mile logistics programs, setting you up to get more out of both your data and your fleet. 

Benefits of Close Integration Between Telematics and Last Mile Delivery

Okay, let’s say you’ve prioritize connectivity and telematics integration: your telematics system captures asset usage data on the road, your driver mobile application captures status updates and proof of delivery, and you’ve got a dashboard and reporting within a single solution where you can contextualize, analyze, and act on that data in real time. 

At that point, what benefits should you expect to see? Here are a handful:

• Improved ETAs: Getting ETAs right can be a difficult balancing act, but the more data the better. Combining real-time location information with status updates enables you to constantly update your delivery ETAs throughout the course of the last mile to ensure accuracy and precision. 
• Faster exception management: Accurate ETAs are great for building predictability into delivery runs—but they also help turn up exceptions such as late deliveries. When you can spot that a particular stop isn’t going to happen on time, you can proactively reach out to the customer or driver to get a quick resolution to the issue. 
• Better reporting and analytics: Data is destiny in logistics. The more effectively you can leverage the data you collect on your delivery runs, the more easily you can ensure that your processes are all running smoothly—and iterate on those that might not be. 
• Smarter customer experience: Real-time tracking is non-negotiable for most delivery customers at this point. But by combining data from telematics and your driver mobile app, you can improve the delivery tracking experience even further by offering additional information to your customers. At the same time, you can automatically trigger alerts to customers when their stop is next, increasing the odds that they’ll be home to receive the order when the driver actually arrives. 
• Improved documentation: Digital proof of delivery can be a huge time and money saver for modern business—they remove the possibility of a paper proof of delivery slip being lost, and they can include photos that document the delivery more effectively than a signature could ever do. And telematics integration enhances the value of that documentation even further by adding precise location data. 
• Streamlined compliance: Reporting on hours of service, IFTA taxes, and other important areas of compliance is much easier if you have total integration between your last mile and telematics systems. Strong integration can save you serious time and money in this department. 
• True logistics visibility: Visibility isn’t just a matter of gathering data, it’s about making sure the right people can access the right data precisely when they need to. When you effectively integrate telematics data and last mile delivery workflows, you can achieve that level of visibility—which is a huge step towards more standardized and efficient workflows. 

All of these factors can add up to one thing for fleet operators: reduced costs and streamlined processes across the board via telematics integration.  

How DispatchTrack Enables Streamlined Telematics Integration

So what’s the key to actually achieving all the benefits we’ve been laying out above? It’s to make sure you’re leveraging a last mile logistics solution that will integrate seamlessly with your telematics data. 

That’s exactly what DispatchTrack offers. Our platform is built to connect easily with Geotab, Samsara, and other leading telematics providers to ensure total visibility between the last mile and your telematics data. DispatchTrack complements and extends telematics providers’ fleet management capabilities, combining our delivery and stop analytics with vehicle, compliance, driver, and DVIR data to provide a 360-degree picture of your fleet.

The complementary value of delivery insights combined with vehicle and driver performance and compliance paves the way for continuous monitoring and improvement. DispatchTrack users can turn all of that extra data into smarter route optimization and planning. At the same time, the two systems can work together to create outstanding customer experiences that will keep customers connected and in-the-loop throughout the process. 

The key here is the unified view of your data that we provide. With the right information at your fingertips in either solution, compliance becomes a matter of quickly downloading a report or looking at a dashboard. You have the real-time data that you need while the delivery is unfolding, as well as a clear view of the analytics after the fact so that you can iterate on your processes over time.

If telematics integration is a goal for you as a delivery organization, reach out to one of our experts today to learn how DispatchTrack can help you achieve seamless integration, smarter deliveries, and more cost-effective fleet management.