Telematics Colombo 2023: The most significant technology event in South Asia

How was it to visit Telematics Colombo 2023?

You enter a spacious Shangri-La hotel lobby, enjoying a sea view, and head for the Main Ballroom. There, a dozen beauties dressed in stylish saris meet you with colorful cocktails. Photographers take pictures to present you as if from the magazine cover. The leading media of the country set up their cameras to show the event in prime time. You shake hands with the representatives of the biggest companies in South Asia. And it’s all shown on TV!

Let’s see what was there at the event!

Telematics Colombo 2023 highlights

First, a video is worth a thousand words, so we’ve published the Telematics Colombo 2023 Live Stream from the event on YouTube and Facebook. It’s like visiting the event online but with the option to pause it anytime.

If you don’t have two hours to view the video, we’ve cut the live stream into pieces and presented the highlights as text. 

HAZER Launch

HAZER was the first product presented at the conference. Here are the main points of interest: 

1. In the old days, people kept birds in mines to sense harmful gas. These birds gave their name to the HAZER IoT platform, which serves a similar purpose but uses sensors instead of birds.

2. Detecting harmful substances is only one of the 1000 use cases. HAZER supports almost every sensor on the market – water and fuel level sensors, machine hour and energy counters, and temperature monitoring devices are among the most popular.

3. HAZER comes in two options – Premium and Specific. “Specific” is when the platform is configured for a single application (e.g., temperature monitoring) and comes with pre-set devices out-of-the-box. We can send the device anywhere globally. You just need to place it and log into the HAZER app. Several “Specific” apps make up HAZER Premium.

4. HAZER offers all you need for advanced sensor monitoring:

• IoT dashboards to monitor sensor widgets in real-time;
• Insights dashboards to watch sensor data analytics updated in real-time;
• Plus, flexible reports, real-time charts, and notifications.

5. HAZER use cases globally include water tank monitoring in South America, temperature monitoring in South Asia, and diesel generator monitoring in Europe.

6. Both businesses and individuals use HAZER. During the presentation, Sanjeeva showed how he monitors his private vehicle and water consumption at home.

GOFER Launch

Next came GOFER – an Uber-like platform for business ride management and employee transport monitoring. If you’ve ever wanted Uber tailored to your tasks and vehicle fleet, here’s what you need to know about the new solution.

1. Unlike a fleet management system that tracks vehicle movements, GOFER tracks a trip with all its details – purposes, planned vs. actual routes, passengers, costs, etc.

2. GOFER allows managing all types of trips your employees may take – on-demand, recurring, single point, multipoint, and round. Every time the platform automatically generates optimized routes.

3. There are different user roles – passenger, manager, dispatcher, and driver. Depending on the role, a person can request, edit, approve, or decline vehicle requests.

4. In GOFER, you can create the structure of your organization. Then you can distribute the transportation budget between branches and departments and track their spending.

5. GOFER also automatically calculates driver payments based on the number of trips, kilometers, or actual driving time.

6. GOFER won the “IoT Project of the Year” global award for public transport in October 2022. KLOUDIP implemented it for Brandix and achieved $12,500 monthly savings on employee transportation.

EPORT Launch

EPORT is a delivery ecosystem that allows managing cargo and transport on one screen without calling everyone. If you do business in logistics, distribution, retail delivery, or logistics-related areas, EPORT will help you automate your business. Here are just a few highlights of the solution.  

1. Cargo owners, 3PL operators, fleet owners, and hybrid users can collaborate to get the goods delivered fast and at a low cost.
2. Complex algorithms and AI underlie EPORT for vehicle capacity and route planning.
3. EPORT instantly re-calculates delivery costs after introducing changes to routes.
4. The platform can automatically plan trips based on the existing routes and predict possible backhauls.
5. You can create pick-up/drop-off locations and contacts. Contacts can set the types of alerts they wish to receive.
6. EPORT also enables the creation of supplier and customer billing contracts and comprehensive billing.

Telematics Next

At that moment, the audience knew the solutions. The time has come to explain why businesses should implement them.

Alex Smirnov, the Business Development Director for the MEA region, evidenced how telematics kept businesses growing in the most challenging times. That’s why he’s the right person to speak about telematics trends:

1. The pandemic, war, and broken supply chains are the main challenges for today’s businesses.
2. To address these, businesses need long-term planning, maximized time, and cost efficiency.
3. IoT devices collect data, while IoT software turns it into valuable insights understandable to any human. But AI becomes the cherry on the cake, assisting managers in decision-making based on accumulated data.
4. Today, IoT and AI vs. old methods are like iPhones vs. Nokia 3310. You can keep dialing numbers while your colleagues are having a Facetime conference.
5. IoT cuts costs, improves ESG scores, satisfies customers, and raises efficiency and productivity.
6. In the next few years:

• Mobility users will switch to sharing rather than owning;
• Buyers will demand faster last-mile delivery;
• Fleet operators will rely on video telematics for accident management;
• Hospitals will adopt smart diagnostics based on sensors and wearables;
• More on-site and managerial decisions will be taken based on data.

Telematics user success stories

Telematics drives Abans through the pandemic and beyond

Jerastin Dubash – the Digital Lead at Abans Group of Companies – reported on how the company used vehicle telematics before the pandemic, and how COVID-19 changed the way Abans manages its fleets, cargo, and warehouses. Here are the highlights of her speech at Telematics Colombo 2023: 

– Before the pandemic, the company connected 200 vehicles to fleet management. 50% of vehicles were equipped with fuel level sensors in addition to GPS;

– The vehicles delivered goods from 5 warehouses to 300+ showrooms;

– When the pandemic started, Abans had to transform the business to operate as a doorstep delivery service;

– Telematics also allowed fleet managers and dispatchers to direct deliveries from the comfort of their homes; 

– When the crisis started, telematics ensured massive savings on fuel and vehicle maintenance;

– Abans’s warehouse and transport staff of all ages became more comfortable with the use of smartphones and tablets and the use of digital technologies in general;

– In 2023, Abans plans to drive down fuel and overall transport costs by using load planning and reverse logistics through EPORT.

Abans underwent this transformation within only two weeks. And your business can do the same!

Digital transformation strategy of transport management – the Brandix way

At Telematics Colombo 2023, Chandana Liyanage – DGM Group Head of Transportation – shares the company’s digitalization strategy based on KLOUDIP solutions. Brandix successfully implemented the largest number of telematics solutions among all KLOUDIP customers, and Chandana is ready to present the results: 

– Telematics covers almost every aspect of Brandix’s transportation system:

• 30,000 people transported daily;
• 1,000 vehicles connected to the telematics;
• 750 transport service providers united in a single ecosystem;
• $6,800,000 annual investments in people transportation;
• 20 fleet Managers.

– Visibility & real-time data are critical to managing large fleets. But the implementation should proceed step by step and under the company’s grand strategy.

– Brandix uses the whole range of KLOUDIP solutions to take all types of vehicles under control: 

• FiOS for Vehicle Tracking;
• DISTRIBUTION for Route Optimization;
• GOFER as a transport management platform;
• SHUTTLE mobile app for recurring employee rides;
• CIRCUMSPECTOR for driver behavior monitoring.

In the end, Chandana is sure that the key to successful telematics implementation is a partnership on multiple levels and between different branches or departments. But there’s always resistance to change, so innovators should focus on corporate culture first.  

Logicare

Logicare is a 3PL company, providing warehousing, transport (250+ trucks), consulting, and last-mile delivery. The company uses FiOS for fleet management and DISTRIBUTION for delivery services, and Ms.Gayathri Karunanayake shares the experience first-hand. 

• KLOUDIP and Logicare cooperate to provide a better customer experience through a digitally enabled environment.
• Real-time tracking and route optimization help much. But the capability to predict possible delays and share the delivery data with customers is impressive.
• KLOUDIP solutions intelligently combine drop-offs and returns in a single ride, which boosts productivity and raises drop-off density.

Logicare expects the EPORT delivery ecosystem to take its operations to a new level. And KLOUDIP will do everything possible to deliver the expectations.

Tesla IoT: Sensors for retail and pharmaceutical companies

If you were searching for a sensor to monitor temperature and humidity in vehicles, buildings, or containers, here’s the shop window for you. Watch Vitaly Rotinberg, Export Manager at TeslaIoT, covering its best devices – from standard 2-in-1 sensors to impressive 7-in-1 models.

Escort Monitoring Group: Liquid monitoring solutions

On Telematics Colombo 2023, Tim Almaev from Escort Monitoring Systems presented its latest devices designed to monitor fuel, water, and other liquids. The sensors are already used in 118 countries, including Sri Lanka. Here are a few insights from the presentation: 

• Sensors boast a measuring accuracy of 99%, regardless of the tank size.
• Bluetooth relieves you from tons of wires, previously entangling your vehicles and facilities.
• Escort sensors are protected from driver vandalism and damages, so will remain operational in harsh conditions.
• Escort offers iOS and Android apps for remote sensor calibration, so you don’t have to be on-site to configure devices.
• Fuel monitoring solutions allowed a mining company to detect $37,000-worth document frauds and prevent $15,000-worth fuel thefts monthly.

Trailblazers of KLOUDIP solutions

Even though guests have already got a whiff of dinner, their attention was drawn to the “Telematics Trailblazers Awards.” We recorded the full ceremony on the video and particularize each of the winners below: 

1. MAS Holdings
2. Brandix
3. Durdans Hospital
4. Unilever
5. Abans Group of Companies
6. Colombo Logistics
7. Home Lands Holding

In the end

• 500 representatives of the largest companies in Sri Lanka attended the event.
• Hundreds of people globally were watching the live stream.
• 5 main media of the country brought the event on TV and printed media.
• 3 biggest companies reported thousands of dollars of monthly savings with telematics.

And we captured this perfect evening in the photos minute by minute. Check out Telematics Colombo 2023 album on Facebook for 350 best and most professional photos – see if you are there, like, share, and enjoy.

Finally, we would like to thank all guests spending the Friday evening in the epicenter of new technologies and the KLOUDIP team for holding such a large-scale event. See you next year!