As businesses grapple with rising fuel costs, evolving vehicle technology and increasing safety, regulatory and compliance obligations, fleet operators are increasingly turning to data-driven tools to gain greater visibility over their operations.
For telematics giant Geotab, this shift represents a major opportunity to optimise its customers' fleet management capabilities.
The Ontario, Canada-based company, founded in 2000, has grown from a vehicle tracking provider into a global fleet intelligence platform.
Today, the company monitors an astonishing six million vehicles worldwide and processes more than 100 billion data points every day, giving fleet operators significant insight into how their vehicles and drivers are performing.
Instead of concentrating its focus on vehicle tracking and reactionary processes, Geotab is harnessing AI, as it moves towards a new strategy based on predictive analytics.
Speaking at the Australasian Fleet Education & Leadership Summit, Chris Martin, Senior Manager of Solutions Engineering - APAC at Geotab, explained that trends are changing in the telematics space.
"Rather than just capturing information on an individual fleet basis, we can start to look at trends and patterns," Martin said.
"That's where the power of AI is really helping us. It allows us to move into a more predictive way of managing a fleet rather than a reactive model."
Geotab entered the Australian market in the mid-2000s, making it one of the company's earliest international expansion markets.
The nation's vast geography, combined with its concentration on mining, resources and remote workforces, made it a natural fit for telematics technology.
"Remote workers and mining resources were a really strong part of our initial growth," Martin said.
"Today, we have fleets across virtually every industry using the platform."
Telematics combines vehicle sensors, GPS tracking and onboard diagnostics to provide fleet managers with a comprehensive view of vehicle performance. The technology can monitor everything from engine health and fuel consumption to driver behaviour and vehicle location.
This data has become even more valuable in the competitive 2026 landscape. Rising costs of conducting business must be taken into account, as does the importance of safety. Geotab's telematics data gives fleet managers the right outlook as they look to balance these two important concepts.
Fuel management remains one of the biggest areas of focus.
While fuel has long represented a major operating expense for fleet owners, global supply concerns, as well as price volatility, have made efficiency gains more important than ever.
Telematics data can reveal costly behaviours such as excessive idling, inefficient routing and aggressive driving patterns that increase fuel consumption.
The data can also help organisations determine whether they are using the right vehicles for specific tasks. In some cases, a detailed analysis of vehicle utilisation may reveal that smaller or more efficient vehicles could perform the same work at lower cost.
As well as the size or type of vehicle, what is underneath the bonnet becomes a more pertinent consideration in the contemporary vehicle landscape.
While EV adoption continues to grow in the consumer car market, fleet operators face a more complex transition. Especially for regional and remote operations, range anxiety, lack of critical charging infrastructure and inertia are examples of the impediments for uptake of the electric revolution.
"Those barriers are gradually coming down," Martin said.
Geotab has invested heavily in EV management capabilities following its acquisition of electric vehicle analytics company FleetCarma nearly a decade ago. The technology allows fleet managers to monitor battery state-of-charge, track charging behaviour and identify potential operational risks before they become problems.
Managers will receive alerts if a vehicle has not been charged overnight or if it is at risk of running out of range during a scheduled route.
"Getting visibility into state-of-charge helps address range anxiety," Martin explained.
"It allows operators to intervene before a vehicle becomes a problem for the job it needs to perform."
As telematics capabilities expand, however, privacy for workers is an ongoing consideration for fleet managers.
Driver monitoring systems, particularly video telematics that include inward-facing cameras, can raise concerns among employees.
While resistance has been seen when organisations first introduce monitoring technologies, transparency and open communication is important to maintaining trust among an organisation's workforce.
In many cases, video technology can actually protect drivers rather than penalise them.
Forward-facing and driver-facing cameras can provide critical evidence following accidents, helping establish exactly what occurred.
"In heavy transport especially, the consequences of an incident can be significant," Martin said.
Looking into the future, Geotab is confident that the combination of large-scale data collection, AI-driven analytics and connected vehicle technologies will continue to transform fleet operations for business across its various markets.
Accurate interpretation of telematics data, as well as effective implementation of the insights it produces, will be critically important for fleet managers.
"The important thing is making sure organisations are using the data available to them," Martin said.
"Whether that's through analytics platforms, business intelligence tools or benchmarking against similar fleets, the value comes from understanding what the data is telling you and using it to make better decisions.