Telogis Wants to Help You Manage Your Assets Better

March 2010
Volume 22, No. 2
FLEET MANAGEMENT
TELOGIS WANTS TO HELP YOU MANAGE
YOUR ASSETS BETTER
By Don Horne
Like any good product, Telogis, Inc.
was recommended by word-of-mouth.
Asplundh Tree Expert Co had
installed the Telogis fleet management
solution as a way to better utilize their
crews and vehicles, and of course Florida
Power & Light (FPL) needed the services of Asplundh. Soon Asplundh provided
live access to FPL, and it wasn’t long
before the utility came onboard and
embraced the Telogis’ system.
Some worry that such tracking
devices are like having Big Brother peering over their shoulder. Every movement,
every stop of a work crew’s truck is
instantaneously monitored at a keystroke
— not to mention the history of where,
when and how that vehicle was used.
Some see it as an intrusion – but for
others it can be a job-saver.
“Some people see the name of a big
utility on the side of a truck, and they see
an opportunity to make money,” says
Tim Taylor, Chief Operating Officer of
Telogis. “They falsely claim that a truck
or crew did damage to their property, and
in the past it was a he-said, she-said situation. Now it’s possible to just go back
through the travel logs and show that the
truck wasn’t there, or never made a stop,
or wasn’t speeding… saving utility thousands of dollars in false claims and litigation.”
But the biggest cost saving is in a
better utilization of the assets that a utility has, both people and machines.
“FPL found that you don’t need to

Basic Black Box with PTO and Boom Inputs
Basic Box
Boom
Input
Standard Antenna
and power
connections
PTO Input
send a boom truck out on every call,”
says Taylor. “Instead of dispatching and
paying $100,000 plus on a boom truck,
you can save by sending out a pickup
truck to do the job. The system provides
metrics on this type of fleet utilization
and is all about making intelligent decisions about costs and responsiveness.”
Especially in Florida, hurricane
response is vital for FPL.
“The coordination of fleets to
respond to hurricane-affected areas is
crucial,” says Taylor. “When different
utilities are sending out vehicles for hurricane relief, you need a system to coordinate and complement crews, thereby
eliminating redundancy and avoiding situations where men or equipment is missing. Telogis can integrate the viewer for
multiple emergency response providers,
thus ensuring a coordinated effort.”
Tim Taylor’s experience before
becoming COO of Telogis is varied, to say the least.
Tim has extensive experience in senior leadership positions with start-up and fast-growth companies on an international scale.
EMERGENCY RESPONSE
In the case of Asplundh, its response to last year’s ice
storm in Dallas, Louisville, Kentucky was an excellent example of the Telogis fleet-tracking technology working at its best.
“Asplundh responded to the call for help by sending crews
and five vehicles, and provided their customer, Oncor, with
what they call ‘Telogis live’, a realtime customer view into the
location of the Asplundh vehicles. It helped. Oncor coordinate
the a joint response to outages”.
In response to the question of the challenge of introducing
new technology, Taylor points out, “The Telogis technology
has a very simple user interface”. “If you can work with
Google, you can work with us. Once set up, the system sends
useful operational information, alerts and reports, without
requiring a user to log in.” Along with FPL, other utilities coming on board with Telogis are Georgia Power, Con Ed in
Chicago and Indianapolis Power, to name a few.
More than just a fleet deployment network to manage
assets in the field, the Telogis software is about location intelligence, helping to integrate human resources requirements,
Fact Sheet
TELOGIS FLEET
A GPS-based fleet productivity and management platform is a scalable, easy-to-use, Software as a Service
(“SaaS”) solution for fleets. Its features include
AVL/GPS, routing, navigation, satellite imagery, vehicle
maintenance, and reporting and measures asset tracking metrics such as idle time, speed and engine on/off
status.
TELOGIS GEOBASE
The company’s market-leading geospatial platform and
mapping solution for application developers, systems
integrators, enterprise users and other peers, including
telematics OEMs. Features include rich and detailed
maps, navigation, geocoding, reverse geocoding and
route optimization.
TELOGIS MOBILE
Powered by Telogis Fleet, Telogis Mobile is a wireless
location-enabled application that allows businesses of
all size to increase regulatory compliance, streamline
operations, and improve customer service while eliminating paperwork and manual dispatch functions.
Telogis Mobile can be run on any Windows CE device.
TELOGIS ROUTE
Telogis Route is a GPS fleet management and multiple
vehicle route optimization and planning solution.
Customers benefit by reduced transportation costs,
improved customer service, and improved operational
efficiencies. Features include multi-vehicle route optimization taking into account delivery schedules and
balancing metrics, turn by turn route cards, and more.
vehicles and work to ensure that the best people are placed in
the proper situations, and get work done most efficiently “fundamentally”, according to Taylor, “a fleet telematics solution is
about visibility and accountability. It helps you work smarter
and more cost-effectively”.
The Telogis product portfolio consists of a comprehensive
wireless fleet management solution for fleets and a robust, proprietary mapping solution for fleet management companies and
other telematics OEMs, enterprise users and systems integrators.
Telogis Fleet, the company’s GPS-based fleet productivity
and management platform is a scalable, easy-to-use, Software
as a Service (“SaaS”) solution for fleets. Its ease of use has
allowed Telogis Fleet to achieve a significantly high adoption
rate among its fleet management customers. Telogis Fleet
enables fleet managers to improve productivity and reduce
operating costs by providing secure, remote access to real-time
GPS vehicle and driver information as well as providing dispatch and route optimization and handheld products for fleet
optimization.
Telogis Fleet has an extremely open architecture and can
integrate with a wide range of fleet management, CRM software, or mobile resource management systems. Telogis Fleet
can communicate with and import data from other applications
as well. Telogis application programming interface (API) tools
and software development kits (SDK) are also available to provide an additional level of customization. As an example,
many customers customize Telogis Fleet and layer in verticalspecific data, such as gas lines and power lines etc., with their
Layers software.
Telogis Mobile is a wireless location-enabled application
that allows businesses of all sizes to increase regulatory compliance, streamline operations, and improve customer service
while eliminating paperwork and manual dispatch functions.
Telogis Mobile can be run on any Windows CE device.
Highlights of Telogis Mobile include: Voice prompted
turn-by-turn navigation using premium NAVTEQ map data, an
hours-of-service module for regulatory compliance, and realtime instant messaging.
The navigation functionality enables drivers to route themselves to known customer locations as well as new locations
entered on the fly. Stops can also be dispatched by the back
office via Telogis Fleet, Telogis’ web-based fleet management
application. The seamless integration of web-based and mobile
applications is a natural extension of Telogis’ technology portfolio.
The real strength of Telogis Fleet comes from the platform
upon which it is built. The platform, another product set sold
by Telogis, is Telogis GeoBase.
Telogis GeoBase is the company’s market-leading geospatial platform and mapping solution for application developers,
systems integrators, enterprise users and other peers, including
telematics OEMs. Features include rich and detailed maps,
navigation, geocoding, reverse geocoding and route optimization. The strong demand for a geospatial mapping platform
was initially derived from other peers in the AVL and GPS location industry. Users embed GeoBase maps in their web-based
AVL and GPS software applications.