Vehicle technology expert Tracker is gearing up for what it describes as “a lot of growth” in the vehicle tracking and telematics market through the Tracker Fleet system it launched 12 months ago.

The firm claims telematics in the fleet sector as a whole is growing at between 10-20%, with mobile fleets of traditional sales people being a target market.

“It is an expanding market. We have positioned ourselves very well to capatilise on the growth and I’d expect us to be above the market because of the scale and innovation of our business,” Tracker marketing and technology director Clive Girling told BusinessCar.

“Sales fleets are probably the biggest partially untapped market. Logistics fleets and commercial vehicles understand what this stuff’s about and are on a sensible growth trajectory.

“How sales directors manage fleets of people that have to drive places in cars – it’s relatively untapped.”

Girling admitted the industry as a whole had not covered itself in glory in recent years in areas such as return on investment and the robustness of systems, as well as companies going out of business and leaving fleets out of pocket.

“I’ve absolutely no doubt at all that every fleet of vehicles should have tracking on it now, it improves efficiency, makes working life better day-to-day and proves what it can do,” he declared.

“But 80% of the market doesn’t have it. Why not? I don’t think it’s a cost issue, it’s more a hangover from the past.”

Tracker refers to the telematics market as “maturing”, and one element of that is the move from price-based decisions to looking for a technological partner.

“We are absolutely seeing in a maturing market that customers are looking for partnerships,” said the firm’s product manager Robin Fellows.

“It used to be how much is it, now they are much more educated and understanding about what they want from a system.”

The firm admits it still has some recognition work to do in order to help its growth aspirations. “We are synonymous with stolen vehicle recovery and we have to do a better job ourselves to get brand coverage to work across fleets,” said Girling.

“Is there a perception issue? Of course there is. When you go out and talk to customers, I don’t think there are as many transport managers who say Tracker is the leading telematics provider as is the case who say Tracker is leading stolen vehicle recovery company.”

“It’s a shame in a way we’ve underplayed it for a while, 10 years ago Tracker was as dominant in fleet as it is today in stolen vehicle recovery,” he continued.

“We underinvested in fleet in technology and marketing of technology for a number of years.

“We fixed that a while ago and now our challenge is to ensure we’re being seen as synonymous with fleet tracking as we are with stolen vehicle recovery. It’s a great place to be starting from.”

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