Where to Start

Telematics projects usually start with a demonstration. The order that works starts with three figures you can produce from existing records.

The three figures

Utilisation: days used against days available, per vehicle, over a quarter.

Unscheduled maintenance as a proportion of total maintenance spend.

Days off road, by cause.

All three from the workshop records and the fleet list.

No hardware required, and together they tell you where the money is.

Weeks one to four

Build the fleet register properly. Registration, VIN, model, acquisition date, finance terms, assigned site.

Most fleets discover the register is wrong — vehicles disposed of still listed, vehicles in use missing.

Then the three figures.

And the fault-code baseline if any vehicles already report: many have manufacturer telematics nobody has activated.

Weeks five to eight

Assemble whole-life cost for one vehicle type, the one you have most of.

Fuel from cards, maintenance from invoices, downtime from the workshop, residual from actual disposals.

A spreadsheet.

This is the number that justifies everything that follows, and it is usually the first time anyone has produced it.

Weeks nine to twelve

Trial devices on the worst vehicles, not the newest.

Verify what they actually read against the dashboard.

Check the odometer agreement weekly.

Then decide on a rollout, with the field list and the integration questions answered rather than assumed.

What to avoid

Buying on a map demonstration, which shows the least valuable capability.

Starting with driver behaviour, which is a different subject with different obligations and produces a workforce conversation before any value has been demonstrated.

Fitting the whole fleet before verifying one vehicle of each model.

And enabling every alert on day one, which is covered in its own note.

What a quarter should produce

A correct fleet register.

Three measured figures and one whole-life cost.

A verified field list per vehicle model.

And a decision that may be to activate the manufacturer telematics you already have rather than to buy anything — which is a legitimate outcome and one no vendor will suggest.

Check the fleet register first

Because it is usually wrong.

Vehicles disposed of still listed. Vehicles in use missing. Registrations that changed.

Every figure that follows depends on it, and every hour spent analysing a wrong register is wasted.

An afternoon against the finance records and the insurance schedule, which is where the discrepancies show.

A practical configuration prompt

During configuration, use the connected-work reference to prompt questions about identifiers, ownership and output. Treat the page as a starting point and document each assumption.