Technology trends 2020. The year results by KLOUDIP

2020 was tough, but with new challenges come emerging technology trends, and their impact can’t be underestimated. Today, we’ll discuss what happened to the world this year and how telematics and IoT solutions helped businesses survive it. 

As a technology source, we take KLOUDIP – the developer who provided solutions for most of the challenges that the world faced in 2020.

• COVID-19 detection and contact tracing solutions
• Remote work and management services
• Software for remote monitoring of transport, buildings, and facilities
• Advanced driver assistance and zero-touch vehicle sensor integration
• The sensorless fuel monitoring solution
• Truly affordable GPS tracking for private cars

And it’s only a small part of solutions released by KLOUDIP in 2020. 

Technologies to fight COVID-19

Based on its IoT platform, KLOUDIP created the solution for COVID contact detection and tracking.

COVID-19 contact detection

Thanks to OSTIARY, every supermarket, business center, factory, hospital, and any other building or area can get a low-cost visitor management system working in the cloud. 

OSTIARY is a small telematics camera that automatically identifies visitors, takes their temperature, and checks if people are wearing masks. And this is how it works:

1. A high-speed thermal camera captures the temperature of multiple people at one meter and detects masks on their faces.
2. It sends the data to the IoT platform, which analyzes it and notifies guards if somebody is suspected as COVID-positive or COVID-dissident (not wearing masks).
3. It happens in seconds so the guards can promptly isolate the suspected person from other people in the building.

Finally, the solution helps to protect guards – the first line of defense against COVID in buildings – as they no longer need to take visitors’ temperature manually.    

COVID-19 contact tracing

Additionally, KLOUDIP delivered a COVID contact tracing solution. 

The company created the Probe mobile app to track employee activities from the time he takes a bus to work, including movements inside the office. When installed on an employee’s smartphone, the Probe app can detect: 

• The bus driving an employee to work
• Work attendance time and entrance gate
• Worktable or machine
• Lunch time and table number

Probe tracks employees’ movements and activities in any place based on NFC/QR points scanning and GPS location in open areas. Learn more about it here.

2020 technology trends for employees and managers

COVID-19 forced everyone to operate remotely – sole proprietorship, retail, education, production, transport, government, civil services – it happens in all areas. In this context, we should mention the impact of technologies on employees and managers.

Solutions for remote work

For employees – office staff, factory workers, sole traders, teachers – it means the possibility of doing their jobs remotely. 

KLOUDIP developed an online portal where employees can interact with each other and with customers online, without physical presence. 

• Accounting staff manage documents – quotations, invoices, sales orders – and accept payments securely in a few clicks.
• Salespersons interact with customers with quick emails and work chats from home.
• Technical and customer support communicates with clients through a ticket-based system that assigns the problem to the most appropriate support specialist. Customers, in their turn, can track how their issues are being resolved through job statuses.

That way, company employees no longer need corporate SIM cards, phones, and communication equipment at home – all contacts with clients and colleagues are done via the Internet. KLOUDIP implemented the portal in their company and achieved tremendous results due to proper management:

Solutions for remote management

For managers – store and business owners, corporate, team, and unit managers – the solutions allow keeping their staff and operations under control. 

Mobile and service team management

KLOUDIP developed an online service to control staff that works outside the office – technicians, installers, service teams, etc. The software is designed to control field staff locations, arrival times, and job completion statuses. It also allows navigating the mobile employees to their jobs and even paying them online. 

For transport managers, KLOUDIP delivered several solutions: 

Corporate vehicle booking and distribution

In a company where employees or managers use corporate vehicles for business purposes, transport managers need to control corporate rides and vehicle distribution among people. If it’s out of control, drivers will use corporate vehicles for private purposes, and transportation costs will skyrocket. 

A transport manager should control it even if he can’t leave his home – which, actually, happened during the lockdown. For such managers, KLOUDIP delivered GOFER software. It allows transport managers to track all corporate rides – routes, employees, drivers, time in trips, purposes, costs – and bookings. As a result, booking a corporate car becomes as easy as requesting an Uber for a company of any size.

Check out how to use it to transport 20,000 employees.

Solutions for facilities management

A guard monitors access to rooms and buildings. 

A dispatcher controls the temperature and humidity inside the room or container.

A unit manager ensures that machinery and equipment work without interruption. 

A facility manager tracks how much the building and production maintenance costs to the company. 

All these people don’t necessarily need to come to the office or production facility if you install a couple of sensors. And to control buildings and facilities through sensors, KLOUDIP delivered HAZER. This IoT platform allows companies to manage complex mechanisms and buildings on their laptops.

In 2020, HAZER helped companies to:

• Save electricity and water in plants, factories, offices, and homes.
• Ensure proper temperature regimens when transporting and storing pharmaceuticals and blood samples.
• Control humidity where costly healthcare equipment works.
• Build smart homes, warehouses, and utility services with access control systems.

Full-chain logistics and delivery

In case the company renders full-chain logistics services, they need to interact with dozens of carriers and hundreds of delivery customers. For such businesses, KLOUDIP developed EPORT – the delivery ecosystem and e-TMS for 3PLs, carriers, and delivery ordering customers. 

The implementation of EPORT means five things for logistics companies: 

• Remote management of all available transport vehicles, drivers, delivery orders, and payments throughout the logistics chain – from goods manufacturing to selling in supermarkets.
• More clients through best prices in a competitive market. EPORT automatically matches clients and carriers, offering the best prices for both parties.
• Flexible billing. EPORT allows setting individual billing rules per each customer based on contract rates without additional phone calls and negotiations.
• Order tracking. Customers can track their delivery orders on the map and don’t need to call the carrier’s office (no matter local or situated in other countries).
• Future mobility. EPORT mobile app not only navigates drivers to the delivery points but allows them to get proof of delivery from a client and share it with the office online.

It means that the whole logistics chain – orders, delivery, payments, customer service – keeps working automatically without human interaction.

The impact of technologies on retail delivery

KLOUDIP also came up with the relevant solution for retail delivery. 

ZEON platform is an all-in-one solution for retail delivery, featuring: 

• Online store builder suitable for private shops and supermarkets
• Advanced store management system
• A secure payment gateway that makes online payments instantly available
• Embedded delivery service with proof of delivery option
• Mobile apps for buyers, couriers, and store managers

Bringing a store online has never been that easy. Shopping online has never been that convenient. 

ZEON also allows you to start your own courier service. What would you need for it? A car or two-wheeler, actually. Learn more about it here.

New opportunities for businesses affected by COVID in 2020

Do we need another restaurant, tourist agency, beauty salon, electronics repair shop, and transport company? We doubt it – the competition is enormous, and all these businesses are affected by COVID-19. When you consider starting a business, check out these criteria: 

• Possibility to run a business remotely
• Small competition
• Self-selling products
• Independence from logistics, supply, storage, and office facilities

As you remember, even during the curfew, the transport was moving – couriers, sales vans, FMCG transport – delivered goods across the island. And for all this time, these vehicles have never gotten out of control. They were remotely monitored through GPS and fleet management software. Otherwise, they would have suffered more significant losses – fuel, mileage, maintenance, accidents, late arrival fees, and much more.  

A promising business idea from KLOUDIP

As an island-wide leader in telematics, KLOUDIP made it easier for any company to start or expand its GPS tracking and fleet management business. 

KLOUDIP made GPS trackers and software affordable for anyone who wants to enter or grow a GPS tracking business. 

• Those who already have a GPS tracking business can get GPS hardware and system cheaper – almost at cost price – to raise profit margin and get new clients among those who weren’t ready to pay much. The lowest price on the market and a very competitive rate benefits are achieved due to KLOUDIP’s economies of scale.
• Those who plan to start a GPS business can try it with minimum investments. Considering that KLOUDIP covers logistics, supply, and storage of GPS equipment, one only needs a laptop and a few dollars to start a GPS business.

This makes more assets connected, more businesses remotely managed and gives birth to the world invulnerable to lockdowns and curfews. 

The emerging technologies and people who use them

Technology adoption always starts with pioneers. Never has technology been adopted by all people at once. But the more people are involved, the faster the technology will be adopted (like Metcalfe’s law states, the more users in the system, the more useful and efficient it becomes).

In 2020, KLOUDIP became both a pioneer and a popularizer of fleet management technologies.

Pioneering technologies in 2020

ADAS

KLOUDIP were the first to test Advanced Driver Assistance Systems on the roads of Colombo: 

The system automatically detects if a driver sleeps at the wheel, yawns, smokes, talks on the phone, departs lanes, and comes too close to the vehicles in front. If it happens, the ADAS notifies the driver, sometimes preventing accidents within milliseconds. Widely recognized, this technology will make the roads collision-free.   

Sensorless fuel monitoring

Fuel is the largest fleet expense. The usual way to control it precisely is to perforate a fuel tank and insert a long fuel sensor.  

In 2020, KLOUDIP offered a new approach to vehicle owners. The company offered a precise calculation of fuel consumption based on GPS parameters and individual coefficients. It means no more drilling holes in a fuel tank but analyzing data from an average GPS tracker.

The new approach by KLOUDIP makes the fuel monitoring technology affordable for everyone.   

Zero-touch vehicle sensor integration

KLOUDIP have developed advanced logic and scripts to monitor vehicle data – seat belt sensor status, headlights on/off, locking/unlocking doors remotely, trouble codes, HVAC status, accelerations, axle load, engine temperature, etc.

KLOUDIP’s clients use it in preventive maintenance and driving performance analytics.

Advanced fleet management features

KLOUDIP updated its platform twelve times in 2020. It means that the FiOS fleet management platform – including fuel control, reports, mobile apps, maps, remote maintenance, public transport, delivery, and distribution modules – became 12 times more efficient.

All the new functions released in 2020 are provided to clients at once and for free, accelerating the penetration of the latest technologies into businesses.  

Popularizing technologies in 2020

As told above, the more people are involved, the faster the technology will be adopted. That’s why KLOUDIP focused on making GPS tracking affordable for any car user, meaning: 

• Low-cost
• Quickly implemented (preferable by car owners themselves)
• Easy-to-use

In 2020, KLOUDIP released FiOS Lite – the GPS tracking system offering the essential features to track any private car. As it offers the most essential feature set, the system is provided at the lowest possible price, and anyone can master it in 10 minutes. 

FiOS Lite goes with a cigarette lighter tracker that is connected to a car in 2 seconds. It’s instantly ready to use, can be disconnected anytime, and may be used as a phone charger or a microphone telling what’s happening inside the vehicle. The whole solution is called ALLY. 

Isolation and free access to information

To spread the word, KLOUDIP designed a range of resources where anyone can learn more about the new technologies and try them: 

1. The website describes new technologies in simple terms and features the biggest telematics app store. There, businesses and individuals can request software and hardware.
2. The blog tells about how new technologies are implemented in real life by the biggest companies, including MAS, Abans, DHL, etc.
3. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, where KLOUDIP discusses the new technologies in the context of events happening in the country, via colored graphics and video materials.

Check out the resources, follow the technology pioneers, and prepare yourself for 2021. We’ll be waiting for you there.