Get on track!

A good telematics system rarely comes out of a box. Deborah Aarts outlines the strategy two companies took—and the pitfalls they avoided—to achieve real-time visibility into on-the-road shipments.

There’s no denying the difference telematics can make in the supply chain.

In capturing data from remote sources and transmitting it in real-time, the technology holds the potential to give shippers new levels of visibility into the status of in-transit shipments. Rapidly evolving capabilities—like the ability to monitor the temperature of a trailer, for example—promise to improve compliance and security issues.

But despite radical advances in technology, some shippers feel disenchanted with telematics. Whether they manage a private fleet or contract out trucking services, many find the data they receive doesn’t always gel with their systems and operations. And inaccuracies and delays can negate the entire value of a visibility system.

“In our industry, no news is considered to be bad news,” comments Frank Prosia, president of Mississauga, Ontario-based TransPro Freight Systems Ltd. “If you can’t give an answer, that means there’s a problem.”

Sensing frustration from its customer base, his company recently decided to overhaul its entire remote communications structure. With help from Xylotek Solutions, a Kitchener, Ontario-based IT consulting firm, it implemented a satellite tracking system that allows it to generate messages automatically and create reports in real-time, among many other capabilities.

If the system has been a success, it is because the two companies managed to avoid the mistakes that tend to sink telematics installations. Prosia and Douglas Grosfield, Xylotek’s president and CEO, shared their strategy with MM&D.

1. Choose systems that play well with others
Transponders. Software. Portable computers. Servers. The array of technologies required to deploy a telematics solution can be dizzying. One product may be very good at accomplishing one task, but not so good at integrating with the other players in the telematics chain, or a downstream transportation management system (TMS) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite.