Total Asset Management

The Challenges of Disparate Telematics

Upfront Costs

Telematics devices have only started to impact industries in this century. This means a lot of decision-makers still need some convincing when it comes to using this technology to automate their operation. One of telematics’ most significant selling point is how the data it collects can immediately start helping organizations cut costs by reducing accidents and improving efficiency in the workplace. Most systems can actually pay for themselves within X days through the immediate savings, making the upfront investment costs palatable.

If you’ve already invested in a telematics system and are not experiencing your ROI as promised, you may want to check out our blog, 5 Reasons Your Telematics System Isn’t Working For You.

Differing Brands = Multiple Providers

Now that we’ve settled the upfront cost hurdle, another issue with most telematics systems is they only work on a specific brand or type of asset within the organization – some devices may only be compatible with a particular brand of forklift but not another brand of a conveyor belt. While the system may work well for that specific asset, no operation with multiple assets can manage all of their assets at scale using various providers. Adding different systems from different providers to every different kind of asset only creates a bigger headache to managers having to deal with different personnel, installations, applications, and functions. In addition to the added management, this approach can’t even be justified through ROI, making some decide to just not having any software at all.

If a company decides to settle on a specific provider to monitor only specific assets in its fleet, it leaves out a lot of assets that could’ve been managed and monitored as well. What is the point of having full insight into a vehicle if the problem could be in other assets that interact with the vehicle?

So how do operations truly gain full visibility into their entire operation?

The Solution – Total Asset Management

What is total asset management? Simple: a system that is compatible with any make, model, or brand of an asset, even batteries so that all assets can be managed through one provider and one platform. Within an operation, there are a vast variety of vehicles, batteries, chargers, conveyors of different models and types. Innovation and technologies show that there’s potential to have full visibility into any powered asset, so when you can multiply that visibility across all of your assets at the same time, the result on your operation is huge.

Every Asset

From Batteries…

If you’ve already implemented an asset tracker or management device for your vehicles, you may still be leaving out one of the most critical assets in your organization – your batteries. You might’ve heard about the importance of managing your batteries to extend their lifetimes, but if your telematics provider doesn’t offer battery management options as well, you’ve probably decided to push that off for now. Choosing a provider that has telematics to monitor batteries under the same platform as your assets can drive significant cost savings for your organization.

To Conveyor Belts…

When we say manage virtually every powered asset, we mean it. Most companies do not monitor their conveyors, but doing so will show all the uptime and productivity levels based on usage and downtime. It can even point to when it is overused and point to needed maintenance before it breaks down, causing more downtime and money to fix it. If those issues can be caught ahead of time, all of the costs associated with downtime and repairs can be eliminated entirely.

The future of efficient operations is dependent on incorporating management devices to EVERY asset, but the key to unlocking the true benefits of telematics is when they operate together through a single platform.

Under One Platform

The last and most essential part of total asset management is the ability to have full visibility into your operation from one platform. Having the analytical data from your forklift, battery, and even chargers in one dashboard will help managers make informed decisions much faster than having to check a variety of reports from different systems.

Even if your platform compiles all of the data into one view, if it is not displayed helpfully, you won’t get the real value out of your telematics system. A great platform should be able to differentiate every asset in its breakdown and reports, but simple in the way it displays the data.

AssetPro 360 is our platform that has been proven by our users to be a simple-to-use, efficient way to display all of the reports and statistics you need to manage your company better.