Optimize Driver Behavior to Reduce Fuel Consumption

While advancing technology is beginning to bring us electric vehicles, most vehicles on the road still operate on fossil fuels. This includes the commercial vehicles used in major fleet operations. Traditionally, gathering metrics regarding a driver's driving style, vehicle speed, cruise control usage, diagnostics, drive cycle, a vehicle's engine, and other factors has been quite difficult.

Luckily, the emergence of IoT technology specific to the transportation industry and no-code/low-code ETL has begun to help fleet operations manage driver behaviors and reduce fuel consumption through data-driven insights.

Fleet Management and ERP Software in Conjunction with ETL Technology Can Improve Fuel Efficiency Among Leading Transportation Services

Fuel economy and emissions are always topics of discussion in the transportation industry and amongst fleet managers. Finding the most fuel-efficient or eco-driving methods can prove challenging for fleet managers, but new technology makes the process manageable.

Fleet managers and fleet operations can save money and reduce fuel consumption by optimizing driver behavior in real time. Integrate.io's Universal REST API connector makes it possible for dispatchers and fleet managers to achieve fuel savings by serving as the underlying infrastructure to analyze this data and extract meaningful, change-provoking insights by extracting data in JSON format, transforming it (parsing, cleansing, etc.) and enriching it with other data sources, then loading it into a data warehouse that sits under a BI visualization tool.

Integrate.io recently helped a leading Canadian transportation firm reduce vehicle fuel expenses and improve overall fuel consumption rates across the entire fleet. So, how did Integrate.io and a REST API deliver the insights that helped this Canadian transportation company use resources more intelligently?

Recommended reading: Why You Need a REST API

Integrate.io Helps a Canadian Transportation Firm Improve Its Fuel Usage

The team at Integrate.io has been able to help one Canadian transportation firm lower its operating costs and use less fuel by improving its vehicle fuel economy through data-driven insights. To understand how Integrate.io transformed this fleet operation, let's first take a look at this company's stats.

This transportation firm handles truckload services, warehousing, and logistics for both Canadian and international customers. Heading more than ten companies across multiple industries, including retail, restaurants, medical, and manufacturing, the firm is responsible for more than 500 tractors, 1500 trailers, and nearly 1000 employees. Additionally, the organization sets itself apart from its competitors with its true commitment to customers, promising high-quality equipment and round-the-clock service.

The Costs of Fleet Management

A closer look at fleet management reveals that 'Big rigs' typically get around 6 miles per gallon, and truck drivers drive a maximum of 715 miles per day following industry regulations. On average, this amounts to around 119 gallons of diesel every day that truck is on the road. With an average fuel cost of $6.5 USD per gallon, each truck spends about $768 every day just on fuel.

When these figures are applied to the case of the trucking firm with over 1500 trailers, we discover that the Canadian transportation company spends $1.15 million per day on fuel consumption alone.

So, what happens to fleet operations if drivers are not optimizing miles-per-gallon (MPG) or revolutions-per-minute (RPMs) through fuel-efficient driving practices? What if drivers are constantly gear jamming? Speeding? Or if drivers leave a truck idling too long? How long is too long? There are tons of questions to answer and problems to solve. Solutions only exist if you can examine and operate with the correct data.

When the right data is collected, fleet operations can better inform and provide incentives to truckers. In addition, this data and information can be used to help create initiatives that encourage truck drivers to make better decisions on the road when it comes to their overall driving patterns and the amount of fuel they use for daily operations. Overall, improving vehicle fuel consumption through properly analyzed data helps promote more intelligent transportation systems.

Recommended reading: What is a Data Warehouse, and Why Are They Important?

Fleet Management Software Is the Key to Elevating Your Fleet Operation

Before connecting with Integrate.io, the Canadian firm solely relied on ISAAC Instruments and NetSuite for everyday business operations. Learn why this setup wasn't working and how Integrate.io identified the issues, provided solid solutions, and put this transportation firm back in the proverbial driver's seat.

ISAAC Instruments is a comprehensive fleet management software and electronic logging device (ELD) system. The device sends drivers real-time performance data that tracks driving conditions and driver patterns and manages compensation. ELD can also help curb trucking industry regulation violations, such as driving beyond the Hours-of-Service limit. The Canadian firm's overarching goal when implementing ISAAC Instruments' ELD system was to incentivize adherence to truck driving best practices. 

ISAAC Instruments works as an integrated workflow management system for updating driver tasks, such as:

• Scanning bills of lading
• Managing cargo
• Measuring time spent at customer facilities
• Allowing dispatchers to add or modify trips

The Canadian transport company uses NetSuite for Enterprise Resource Planning. NetSuite ERP is a powerful, cloud-based solution that's part of the Oracle software ecosystem. Companies generally use the Oracle NetSuite platform for accounting, billing, order management, procurement, inventory management, and supply chain management. 

Like ISAAC Instruments' ELD, NetSuite also provides real-time visibility into operational and financial performance, with robust accounting, order tracking, inventory, and warehousing data. Users can customize dashboards and reporting tools to analyze real-time visual data.

The problem?

Here are two real-time data analysis solutions, both providing necessary resources and ample data for this Canadian transportation company.

But with no way to read either dataset.

Two sets of data: datasets that seem genuinely complementary and symbiotic, yet with no way for one dataset to "speak" to the other. How do you turn this data into actionable insights?

To be actionable, data must:

• Be relevant
• Have context
• Be accessible where and when it's needed
• Be accurate

ISAAC Instruments and other tools like it don't offer sufficiently customizable dashboards or analytics for decision makers to see what they need to see when they need to see it and inform decisions across the organization.

The disconnect between these two rich datasets costs the Canadian company significantly. Miles driven, fuel consumed, time spent at destinations, driver regulation infractions, and overall driver satisfaction scores weren't being reflected as dollar amounts. But that would entail reading two different datasets for meaning — akin to reading two cookbooks in different languages and hoping to make one seamless meal. 

To make this happen, the ISAAC Instruments datasets and the datasets from NetSuite must be joined. So, the question became: How do we merge these systems?

A centralized data warehouse to house all existing and incoming data points.

NetSuite's financial information would meet and speak to ISAAC's IoT information for the first time, courtesy of the custom dashboard and data visualization geniuses at Integrate.io.

Integrate.io:

1. Extracts data and relevant endpoints from NetSuite and ISAAC Instruments via JDBC and REST API connections, respectively.
2. Normalizes the data using proprietary no-code/low-code transformations.
3. Loads the data into the data warehouse (Snowflake in this case), where the two data sets live enriched.

In addition, another important note here is that Snowflake acts as the centralized data warehouse. Giving life to both previously disparate data sources by providing context to both through the joining and enrichment of both data sets. 

To learn more about how Integrate.io's new ETL platform can help transform your fleet operation, schedule an intro call today.

Recommended reading: Redshift vs. Snowflake: 6 Key Differences

How Integrate.io Can Help Your Fleet Operation Flourish

Optimizing your fleet's fuel consumption now is the key to saving your organization down the road. The implications of allowing your fleet's fuel consumption to continue as-is, unchecked, and basically unmanned, threaten to bleed companies dry. In May 2022, gasoline and diesel prices rose to the highest prices in history. Plus, allowing improper driver behavior to continue doesn't solve the very root of the issue. 

However, if you do want to take action and lessen your fuel consumption through data-driven insights with Integrate.io, your operation can make pivotal changes in real-time as your data and business need to change. The Canadian transportation company can now turn any data into actionable insights and increase operational efficiencies, save on fuel consumption and other implicit costs tied to driver behavior trends. Since Integrate.io solutions are no-code/low-code, you can also automate executive reports and dedicate development resources to more revenue-generating tasks instead of managing pipelines and backend issues.

Integrate.io offers a universal REST API component that allows you to extract data from unique, industry-specific data sources that other ETL tools (who offer only natively built integrations) cannot pull from. In addition, some key reasons to work with Integrate.io include:

• Scalability: Sufficient compute power is required to move data into the warehouse in as near to real-time as possible. As data become larger, more computing power is needed. Each Integrate.io ETL customer has a dedicated cluster for their account that nodes can be added to as desired. 
• Pricing: Many ETL/ELT tools charge clients for every record and row loaded into your warehouse/database. In the case of Big Data or IoT data, a connector pricing model is much more favorable and cost-effective.
• Support and reliability: These pipelines become mission critical. For a small data team, they need all the support they can get and fast. All Integrate.io customers get 24/7 global support with an uptime SLA of 99.5% and response times averaging under an hour. 
• Future-proofing more complex use cases: Integrate.io ETL is extremely customizable and can handle ReverseETL, ChangeTracking, Database migration, change data capture (CDC), and ERP Migrations,

Are you ready to transform your operations with the same data-driven insights and attention to detail? Schedule an intro call to learn how Integrate.io can help you reach your business goals from ERP to fleet management.

Additional Integrate.io Connectors 

• Shopify is an Ecommerce platform that provides tools for both online and physical sales.
• Aftership allows businesses to seamlessly integrate shipment tracking.
• Bill.com helps businesses manage invoices, notices, payment status, and ACH payments.
• Dundas BI is a highly visual business intelligence (BI) tool.
• Freshdesk provides a handy customer support interface.
• Invoiced automates payment notifications, reminders, and invoicing.
• Intercom helps companies build a robust knowledge base while providing a support interface and feedback system.