By Graham Jardine: Head of Wholesale IoT, Telefónica Digital
The changing pace of compliance
The UK transport industry is shaped by regulations. Regulations that influence business strategy, brand and reputation. Regulations that protect employees. Regulations that ensure standards of public service and keep the public safe. Compliance is demanding, and it’s set to get tougher. The increased threat to public safety is likely to lead to more regulations being passed to protect our transport hubs. Exciting innovations create new rules too. Driverless vehicles are being tested on our roads now, and will be a reality within the next ten years. They’ll help improve road safety (95% of collisions in the UK are caused by human error*), reduce emissions, and ease congestion. They’ll also challenge our existing legal and regulatory frameworks.
Keeping on track
The health of your brand and reputation depends on your ability to stay compliant. So does the safety of your employees and customers. How to improve productivity while staying compliant with regulatory, statutory and contractual obligations is a key challenge facing the transportation industry. The Internet of Things (IoT) gives transport organisations the tools and foresight they need to make informed, data-driven decisions. And it makes it easier to provide audit logs that comply with legislation without the need for paper-based reporting. It enables them to meet compliance regulations, makes the admin around compliance easier, mitigates risk, keeps costs down, and supports business growth.
What does the IoT future look like?
The digital world has been providing your employees and customers with seamless, connected experiences with mobile phones for a while. Now it’s time for your infrastructure, vehicles and operations to enjoy better conversations too. The future of the IoT means that all your assets – fixed or mobile – can be connected. It’s estimated that by 2020, more than 25 billion devices will be working together in this way**.
What does this mean for the transportation industry?
Wherever your fleet is – on the road, on the track, in a depot – it’ll be able to send (and receive) secure data in real-time via the cloud. When all your assets talk to each other, you’ll have the second-by-second data you need make informed business decisions.
By fitting simple plug-and-play devices into all its vehicles, an organisation can track vehicle and driver performance. All from a single web portal and dashboard, or by integration into your business systems. How long are your drivers spending behind the wheel? How fast are they moving? Are they wearing seatbelts? Are all your passengers safely out of the carriage? IoT-driven tracking solutions will give you all the answers you need to keep compliant.
Cloud-based workforce management systems can also help transportation organisations to log, track and report on critical tasks. They reduce the need for manual and paper-based processes and increase accuracy, mitigating the risk caused by errors in manual reporting. They take the headache out of compliance reporting, giving employees more time to focus on delighting customers.
In practice, IoT can transform the way transport organisations operate– improving safety for staff and customers, reducing the risk of fines and reputational hits for non-compliance and increasing productivity.
O2: for the road ahead
We always look at how your people and customers live, think and work before we identify the best solution and technology to meet their needs. By taking this approach, our IoT-connected transportation solutions can help transform your data into decisions that have people at the heart. We use our 15-year experience and relationships with industry-leading partners to help simplify, manage and support your infrastructure, vehicles and operations.
Transportation companies are already starting to use this technology to improve their businesses and strengthen their brand and reputation. By thinking people first, we simplify and support the transition, and help businesses get to the benefits quicker. We’re already seeing improved safety, real-time accountability, reduced time and errors from manual reporting and fewer fines. The O2 approach to IoT is helping companies in the transportation industry to meet existing and new legislation. It makes it easier to stay compliant, and keeps regulators on board.
If you’d like to know how O2 can help your business, watch our video here or visit our website here.
* TRL, 2016
** Gartner, 2014
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