RAC admits that many telematics companies produce too much data for fleet managers to manage effectively and, in partnership with Microsoft, has developed advanced analysis techniques to help solve this problem.
It’s a real clever piece of kit and proved a landslide victory in this category among the judges, who felt that RAC Connected Services offered a new ‘pioneering crystal ball approach to telematics’.
The RAC attends 2.5 million roadside breakdown events every year, which are logged in a database of fault indicators, causes and fixes. The firm has now put this data to work in other ways – going as far as to be able to predict and prevent breakdowns.
The RAC data analytics team has been able to merge fault code data streams from telematics units together with years of roadside experience data to give clear understandable advice to fleet managers about vehicle faults.
Fault code combinations are decoded into Red, Amber and Green categories and indicators are sent to vehicle owners via an app or to fleet managers via reports, which in turn enables fleets to save money and reduce vehicle downtime.
Red indicates a fault that will become more expensive or will cause a safety issue if not dealt with straight away, while Amber indicates a fault that requires attention and the vehicle should therefore be booked into a workshop. Green, meanwhile, highlights that the fault is not serious but should be looked at during the next planned service.
This new technology is only half the story, though, as the RAC is about to take this software a step further and launch a service that predicts common faults with vehicles before they actually happen. Currently in an advanced pilot stage, we expect to see this new feature launched some time in 2018.
