BACKGROUND
Increasingly, fleet operators in the commercial and public sectors are being required to comply with a growing list of legislation that not only adds significant costs to doing business, but also exposes them to potentially serious legal liabilities. New EU health and safety directives cover topics as wide-ranging as driver hours, mobile phone usage, working hours and stress reduction.

In order to address these issues and help fleet operators to effectively and efficiently manage their assets, Road Angel Group, the market leader in the GPS Safety Camera and Blackspot locator market, created a subsidiary called Road Angel Fleet to develop and launch a new range of fleet management products. Fleet management involves reducing the organisational and administrative burden of running a fleet of vehicles, combining services tailored to meet the specific needs of the client’s own business.

BRIEF

   

Road Angel Fleet set out to create a completely new solution to live tracking methods, replacing other systems on the market which were overly complicated and expensive. The new boxes would help operators manage maintenance schedules, produce bespoke reporting and enhance driver productivity.

Sam Sandercock, General Manager of Road Angel Fleet, commented: “Our  aim was to integrate technology, processes and expertise to produce a new breed of fleet management system. The product needed to be adaptable to the various needs of the different sectors in which vehicle fleets are used.”

A bespoke solution was needed whereby GPS satellite data could be converted to information shown in a usable format within an easy to use graphical interface, to relay information to the end user.

Sam Sandercock, further commented: “For wireless communications, we instinctively turned towards Alpha Micro. Having worked with them previously on other Road Angel consumer products, we were very impressed by their expertise in the fields of GSM, GPS and GPRS. We were also looking for a reliable partner and we were sure that Alpha Micro would deliver within the strict deadline.”

Alpha Micro was approached to transform the project from concept to reality and the team realised that the products needed to offer a variety of communication protocols that were both

reliable and cost-effective.

They decided to use a combination of Global System of Mobile communications (GSM), Global Packet Radio Service (GPRS) and Global Positioning System (GPS), as Christos Papakyriacou, Managing Director of Alpha Micro, explains: “After careful consideration, we decided to base our solution on the well established and globally available GSM/GPRS networks. This would give us a reliable wireless data packet system to deliver the GPS location fixes of the vehicles we wanted to track. For the GPS we selected the market leading LEA-5H module from u-blox which benefits from excellent receive sensitivity to ensure good position fixes in difficult conditions. Combining these technologies into a sleek solution allowed Road Angel Fleet to offer an extensive range of products and features to their customers.  

SOLUTION

 

Alpha Micro based the Road Angel Fleet system around the tried and tested GSM network provided by international service provider Orange. Orange is a market leader in providing data services to companies wishing to use GPRS to manage their remote assets and equipment.

The hardware created by Alpha Micro that feeds the data is ultra-compact and easy to fit to the vehicle. Real-time data transfer from the vehicles allows fleet managers to control and manage their mobile workforce, which allows productivity gains and a reduction in management costs.

By allowing the collection of data in real time, fleet and workforce managers now have clearer fleet visibility and can compile reports about how a fleet is being deployed whilst monitoring other variables such as driver habits.

The technology gives managers an affordable way to reveal vehicle location whilst the GPS application allows for tailored geo-fencing. This facility restricts vehicles within predefined geographical limits, such as city-wide or UK only and uses GPS location technology to issue alerts to fleet managers when a vehicle is about to pass through pre-determined borders or boundaries.

Road Angel Fleet wanted to offer customers a range of products which could be aimed at the different needs of small, medium and large fleets. Together with Alpha Micro, it developed a range of three solutions featuring different functionalities, comprising: 

Fleet Monitor, a service interval management offering which delivers real time, on-line measurement and event-based reporting based on a system of user-defined alerts.

Fleet Locator, which delivers additional functionality including monthly mileage reporting based on vehicle make, mileage and location by region and allows vehicle location to be visible on a map.

Live Track service which gives organisations such as Leicestershire Police the ability to track vehicles in real time.

The Road Angel Fleet management solution offers many distinct advantages. The monitoring and reporting of fixed and mobile assets offers significant cost reductions and the detailed information provision allows fleet managers to meet timely servicing requirements as well as EU health and safety directives. The solution also has a positive impact on a company’s corporate insurance risk profile.
 
The system is very user friendly and requires no technical expertise or background knowledge to set up or use.  The service can also be easily accessed from any location by logging on via the internet.