The significance of IoT in fleet management cannot be overstated: as major Middle East markets like the UAE and Saudi Arabia look to improve their transportation infrastructure, digitalisation will drive the uptake of telematics in the region. Already, private sector contractors have begun to see the benefits of telematics dashboards that integrate features such as location tracking, operator mapping, user safety, and sensor detection to provide a holistic transport management system.
No more is the scope for IoT integration with telematics dashboards more evident than in the region’s logistics sector. Tom Nauwelaerts, MD of Momentum points out that standalone systems — especially those developed in-house — often demand better integration between the elements of telematics, but that IoT could, with time, improve the situation.
He explains: “The systems we see today are independent, so you have separate transportation, planning and routing systems, and then a separate system purely for the management of the asset — to see how a truck behaves — and then you have to link these things together. Then you have a system driven by GPS coordinates to do the routing, in order to know where the vehicle is and so on.
“All these things are fairly independent from each other. Integration is difficult, and once it’s implemented, it’s pretty static, so I think there is a lot to be done there.”
Indeed, advisory firm Analysys Mason forecasts a 10% compound annual growth rate in IoT in the segment over the next decade.
Nauwelaerts adds: “There are a couple of platforms certified to communicate on an IoT layer, and a few others that provide fleet management solutions and transport planning that integrate with IoT, but I don’t see too many of them that have that. It’s still in the infancy stage; maybe we should wait a bit longer till it’s all out there, up and running.”
Mahmud Awad, Vodafone Qatar’s chief business officer, agrees with Nauwelaerts. “The IoT market in the region is at a relatively early stage in its development and, given the complexity of the technologies involved, developing the necessary infrastructure, ecosystem, and applications will naturally take time. But we’re seeing growing demand from existing and potential customers for IoT solutions. Increasingly, urban challenges are being addressed via technology and the IoT, and this is particularly true in rapidly developing economies and markets like Qatar.
“Our IoT Barometer market report confirms that the market for connected devices has come of age: 28% of organisations globally are already using IoT, and a further 35% say they are less than a year away from doing so. What matters now is not whether a business should adopt IoT, but how,” he says.
