The focus of this innovative tech-driven product and solutions firm is to enable fleet entrepreneurs to drive efficiencies in every aspect of their operations and asset management with robust and customized solutions, which can effectively relieve them from hands-on everyday fleet supervision hassles that rob time and resources from their core business activities, writes Dhiyanesh Ravichandran
Transportation and logistics are often tricky and complicated businesses, as they involve a plethora of dynamic variables and risk factors that can recklessly erode an entrepreneur’s profitability and asset value in his/her plain sight if not diligent. More so in testing times like these, when the domestic trucking and transport market continues to face subdued demand since the last couple of years, now burdened further with the pandemic and lockdown impacts. It’s high time that the transporters take control of all variable and risk factors and plug inefficiencies in all processes as much as they can, as it is not just the profitability but their very survival is under threat.
No doubt, location-based telematics and digitized fleet management services are the way to go about in this regard. But for transporters, it needs considerable investment involving upfront costs and periodic charges to avail the services. They are often skeptical on the right return on the invested capital, in particular, a quick and time-bound return that is worth the extra penny being spent at times of hardship. They are also wary of standard GPS-based telematics systems available in the market, as any ready-made solutions may not capture the specific operational scenarios and priorities of a transporter in entirety, let alone the tethering issues in adapting to a new system or integrating the existing into a new digital platform.
This is where Trinetra Wireless seems to have struck the right chord. An ISO 9001:2015-certified company based out of Coimbatore, its approach to location-based telematics and remote fleet management is out of the ordinary. The company has developed complete end-to-end portfolio in-house, including cutting-edge hardware design and a robust connected technology and data regime for GPS vehicle tracking, fleet and mobility management, and IoT solutions, which allows it to offer solutions that are highly configurable and customizable to the actual needs and priorities of the end users. Trinetra has an advanced hardware design centre located in Canada, while engineering and software development are carried out in India.
In an exclusive interaction with MOTORINDIA, Jayaprashanth J, COO & Co-Founder, Trinetra Wireless, said that his company’s process-led and customer-centric approach is what defines them at best. “When we started working with our customers, we realized that ‘off-the-shelf’ telematics solutions are very basic and add no value to users, as business and operational models of every trucking and logistics firms are dynamic and keep on changing. To make a real difference in our customers’ success, we have to understand their operational scenarios and requirements to develop customized solutions that can effectively drive efficiencies”, he averred.
He explained that even customers within a similar logistics and mobility segment have very different KPIs, which means that the value addition that a product and service provider makes a telling difference. “With every customer, we do a lot of consulting and solutions mapping to understand their actual working processes, cost scenarios, priorities and pain-points before suggesting solutions and product demonstrations. This takes lot of time and resources from our side, but our goal is to ensure that our solutions solve their key challenges and add value in terms of efficiency”, he noted. Trinetra has local presence in 15 different countries including India, with more than 20,000-plus systems installed across the globe. Within transportation and mobility verticals, the company is catering to clients from diverse applications including reefer fleets (cold storage), oil and gas, e-commerce haulage and container logistics, high-value asset tracking, school and staff transportation, inter-city coach applications, taxi fleets, and so on.
“The commercial vehicle-related applications as a segment is good for us, where the space in India is witnessing tremendous traction in the last five years. Since we have studied in detail the working requirements of various clients, we understand all common KPIs of operators in this space, so we are able to extend both modular and customizable solutions that are flexible and scalable to cover end-to-end fleet operations” Jayaprashanth observed. The first set of priorities in this segment is real-time visibility and management of fleet, including current location status, distance travelled, geo-zone or fencing, and utilization levels, to name a few. Route management comes next, where customers can set their own parameters in our system for real-time suggestions on ideal routes, he added.
Transportation clients also look for driver behaviour and grading insights, wherein Trinetra’s solutions take into account a set of driving and vehicle activity parameters to generate data sets that are processed to generate ‘RAG (Red-Amber-Green) reports on driver performance evaluation that are used by fleets to train and incentivize drivers. Fleet management and preventive maintenance is another important priority for them, where preemptive service alerts and remote diagnosis improves the uptime and fleet life, while keeping servicing costs and asset depreciation at bay, according to the COO. “Accuracy and real-time transmission of data is important for triggering alerts, so we have developed robust and fool-proof IT infrastructure including cloud and mobile app platforms for the ease of our customers”, he added.
“Even management of simple things like vehicle idling can help drive efficiencies in trucking and logistics operations, by ensuring fuel economy, safety, just-in-time delivery and enhanced satisfaction of their end customers. We pay a lot of attention and R&D in making insights out of all these data, which is our core strength”. Specialized GPS solutions like mobile data terminal, driver identification, biometric and RFID, temperature monitoring, remote monitoring, and API’s / web services can also be enabled for customers depending on their needs. Jayaprashanth opined that trucking entrepreneurs these days are increasingly becoming aware of the value of data sets, who are also constantly looking for value addition these days. “Our role is also to educate them on key focus areas in data sets, so that they can set their own KPIs rather than ‘off-the-shelf’ parameters”, he said.
He agreed that transporters looking for quick ROI and savings out of investments on telematics and fleet management systems is justified. “We have a precise ROI calculator for our clients, wherein we are able to predict to good accuracy the time period to get ROI depending on their particular use-case scenario. Our utmost priority is to bring rapid returns and savings for our customers” he claimed, while adding that transport entrepreneurs are willing to invest in large numbers despite all market odds in recent times. More so in the pandemic period, he said, where they are more conscious to use their assets appropriately, systems that bring transparency in operational aspects that are also time-saving for the managers and operators are seen as crucial for their very survival. “They see a clear benefit and value addition for sure, else they may not invest during these tough times”, he noted.
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“Our Purpose has always been to be a technology-led innovative and dependable products and services firm that accelerate our clients’ success by enabling them to drive efficiencies and focus on their core business”
– Jayaprashanth J, COO & Co-Founder, Trinetra Wireless