Teletrac Sets New Telematics Standard With Fleet Director 8.1

GARDEN GROVE, Calif., Sept. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Teletrac today released a major upgrade of its industry-leading telematics solution, Fleet Director 8.1, raising integrated vehicle-fleet management to a new level. Fleet Director 8.1 delivers the industry's first real-time fleet analytics in a dashboard-type display that users can access from any Web browser. The new Fleet Director release also makes route scheduling even easier and more effective, reducing costs through labor, fuel and vehicle efficiencies while helping fleets improve service to their customers.

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Teletrac, an award-winning telematics provider for more than 20 years, combines its new analytics and route scheduling technologies with capabilities that have long made Fleet Director an industry leading solution. Fleets gain benefits including lower fuel consumption and out-of-route miles, higher productivity, less unauthorized vehicle use, more on-time arrivals, enforced safer driving—often enabling lower insurance premiums—less driver overtime, reduced paperwork and improved regulatory compliance through automated electronic driver logs.

"Fleet Director 8.1 reflects Teletrac's continuing commitment to excellence and continuous improvement in new functionality," said executive vice president Drew W. Hamilton. "For example, with new real-time analytics, decision makers gain dramatic abilities to head off problems and spot trends as they emerge. The analytics dashboard reveals at a glance key indicators such as fleet utilization, average miles driven, average idle time and much more — offering numerous opportunities to tighten cost control and boost fleetwide efficiencies."  

Hamilton added, "When the vehicles' JBUS data is available, managers can also view fleetwide average fuel efficiency (MPG), engine running time and other vehicle performance metrics. Potential problems like engine fault codes are also highlighted. Only Fleet Director 8.1 serves up real-time analytics like these in a dashboard that fleet managers can access 24/7 to improve decision making. Add abilities like advanced route scheduling, MultiView™ tiled mapping and other enhancements, and you've got a real game-changer when it comes to generating net value from vehicles and people."

Fleet Director 8.1 technology also gives users unprecedented flexibility and ease of use in an easy-to-understand interactive display.  A user friendly and customizable screen display with easily recognizable icons makes Fleet Director easy to use and intuitive from the start.  Users enjoy unique flexibility for displaying multiple map views and data, and can customize window sizes and screen positions on the fly—allowing dispatchers to view whatever information is most relevant at a given moment.

Fleet Director combines SmartNav™ turn by turn navigation, satellite mapping, real-time traffic information, stolen vehicle tracking and comprehensive reporting tools used to monitor mileage, vehicle use and alert managers to unauthorized use and unsafe driving behavior.

The latest release, Fleet Director 8.1, extends core capabilities in numerous ways:

Real-time fleet analytics in dashboard displays

An industry first, Fleet Director 8.1 distills wide-ranging operational data from the most recent 24 hours into a single dashboard-type display that users can grasp at a glance to improve decision making. Users can view these metrics 24/7 through any Web browser. The new analytics dashboard digests data from 16 Teletrac reports and displays results in a high level, easy to understand summary. Operations managers can view per-vehicle averages for fleet utilization, miles driven, idle time and other key performance indicators (KPIs).

When Fleet Director 8.1 receives data from the vehicles' JBUS system, the new analytics dashboard also displays average fleet fuel efficiency (MPG) and average engine running time. Managers can easily spot potential problems because this dashboard shows data for the 10 lowest performing vehicles in each of two key categories — utilization and fuel efficiency — in a fleet or any user-defined sub-fleet. Taken together, these indicators give decision makers unprecedented opportunities to reduce costs and improve operational efficiency.

Advanced route scheduling

Fleet Director 8.1 extends Teletrac's award-winning SmartNav™ system to include route scheduling.  It enables dispatchers to automatically create the most efficient itinerary for up to 19 deliveries on the day's route for each vehicle. Dispatchers set destinations and length of day; Fleet Director 8.1 does the rest — speeding and simplifying dispatchers' chores, reducing human error and ensuring lowest-cost vehicle routing. To help ensure accurate scheduling, it accounts for expected "dwell time" spent waiting at each delivery point.  If Fleet Director 8.1 finds that all deliveries can't be made in one day, it lets dispatchers remove destinations or extend the day.

Because Fleet Director 8.1 is highly integrated, the optimized schedule is downloaded to the vehicle's in-cab display.  To adjust for unexpected delays, dispatchers can re-optimize schedules on the fly, minimizing disruptions to maintain high service levels while also keeping a lid on delivery cost.

Fleet Director 8.1 automatically recalculates the day's schedule, then sends destinations to drivers in newly optimized order, ensuring the most fuel and time efficient routes even when traffic and other events intervene.

MultiView™ tiled mapping and other enhancements

Fleet Director 8.1 is the industry's only fleet management solution that lets dispatchers and managers view multiple interactive maps on the same screen, each map displayed in its own independently controlled window. For instance, users can display one map showing all vehicles, and use other tiled windows to stay zoomed in on several specific vehicles. This unique MultiView map tiling helps Teletrac users make better operational decisions by getting the "big picture" while focusing on potential problems and emergent situations in greater detail. Users can set each tiled map view with its own zoom level and even map style.

Fleet Director 8.1 gives users new abilities to follow the progress of multiple vehicles in a single tiled view. Similarly, users can replay the actions of multiple vehicles in a single view. This ability can help resolve disputes and complaints more efficiently. For instance if a complaint is lodged against a driver and there were two drivers in the area, managers can replay both drivers' routes at the same time in the same view to determine which was present at the place and time of the complaint.

Users will find other enhancements throughout Fleet Director 8.1, improving screen layouts for greater convenience and placing more control at dispatchers' fingertips.  

For additional information regarding the new features of Fleet Director 8.1, visit www.teletrac.net.

About Fleet Director and Teletrac

Already proven and trusted by more than 10,000 fleets in the US alone, Fleet Director saves fleet owners time, money, and reduces their carbon footprint. Teletrac customers report up to 30% lower fuel usage, an average of 15% less driver overtime, 12% higher productivity and less unauthorized vehicle use.

Fleet Director has been recognized by Fleet News Magazine winning its prestigious 2009 Fleet Van Technology Initiative of the Year Award as well as the Fleet Van Award for 2008 Technology of The Year.  Additionally, Fleet Director is the recipient of the 2009 Green Business Award from Management Today and 2009 IT and Communications Product of The Year from Green Fleet Magazine. These are particularly significant as they recognize pioneers of environmental fleet management.

Teletrac, Inc. is headquartered in Garden Grove, CA.  For additional information, visit www.teletrac.net, contact Teletrac at 1-817-323-1448, or via e-mail at [email protected]

SOURCE Teletrac