Netstar, a subsidiary of Altron, has launched a cutting-edge Global Fleet Bureau to
provide improved driver and vehicle safety levels and reduce costs for commercial
fleet customers. The centre is the largest and most technologically advanced bureau
for vehicle telematics on the African continent. It will provide services and standards
that fleet managers increasingly demand from world-class vehicle telematics
companies.
The Global Fleet Bureau, launched on 23 April 2024, will service Netstar’s growing
commercial fleet customer base, emergency contact centre, and vehicle recovery
operation. In addition to offering Netstar’s traditional managed services, including
asset tracking, driver behaviour management, automated incident alerts, reporting
and analytics, the Global Fleet Bureau will facilitate and manage live monitoring
through known and geofenced hotspots, real-time fleet manager notifications, and
live video monitoring through Netstar’s AI on-board cameras.
Netstar’s Group Managing Director Grant Fraser says: “The Netstar Global Fleet
Bureau allows us to deliver unprecedented functionality and service levels to our
customers. It will enhance driver and vehicle safety through, for example, a detailed
event occurrence book to fleet managers facilitating preventative and immediate
remedial action, including live video monitoring of incidents from dispatch to door.
The 52-seater centre, constructed in late 2023 is expected to improve Netstar’s
industry leading vehicle recovery rate, improve responsiveness by 90%, reduce false
positive alerts by 50%, and enable quicker dispatch responses. Looking forward,
Netstar will enable automated dispatches when anomalies occur.”
The Global Fleet Bureau combines Netstar’s advanced telematics with its recently
commissioned artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities, ensuring a
proactive approach to protecting the safety of commercial fleet drivers and vehicles
and, to continually improve service and response times as more data is gathered and
analysed. Netstar monitors over 2 million connected devices, analyses over 181
billion data points and downloads over 170k hours of video per month and currently
tracks over 100 million km’s per day, which is set to increase significantly with the
Global Fleet Bureau scale and capabilities, improving its service levels and incident
response times – a true flywheel effect.
“We have a big responsibility at Netstar to manage and continually improve the
safety of our customers’ drivers, their vehicles and cargo, as well as to create cost
efficiencies within their businesses. The Global Fleet Bureau provides highly trained
and skilled agents, to offer customers exceptional service and equips fleet operators
to maintain or improve their standard service level agreements with their customers.
Our facilities will continue to evolve with our data, AI, and machine learning
technologies.” added Fraser.
The Global Fleet Bureau is geared up to service international fleets and already
provides monitoring and optimal routing services to customers in Sydney. Utilising
its technology and its hardware agnostic IoT platform, Netstar can offer fleet
managers around the globe world-class managed services at highly competitive price
points.
The Global Fleet Bureau will also support Netstar’s role in Business for South Africa
(“B4SA”). Netstar’s involvement in this initiative is to create a safe corridor on the
critical N4 transport route, which is currently plagued by trucking safety incidents.
“The N4 corridor is critical to South Africa’s ability to grow and create jobs. The
Global Fleet Bureau will assist us to improve safety on this route and deliver on our
B4SA commitments” says Fraser.
“Netstar’s new Global Fleet Bureau is a game-changer for fleet owners, fleet
operators and managers. The Global Fleet Bureau offers standard fleet services for
our light fleet markets and can also be customised for our commercial fleet
customers. Each sector will have its own unique set of key fleet priorities” concludes
Fraser.
The new bureau is already delivering value to Netstar’s customers. Blink Logic’s
Managing Director Bernardus Bouwer says the new monitoring capabilities have
been transformative for his business: “Netstar is backed by the Altron Group, and
they’ve got the latest and greatest technology. Their camera system gives me alerts
so that I can understand what is happening on the ground. This is impacting our
insurance premiums because we have much more visibility. We can proactively
manage our field force and we can proactively change our driver behaviour to
minimise risk and accidents.”
After recently visiting the bureau Hertz SA CEO Julian Visagie added: “The Global
Fleet Bureau is extremely impressive. I didn’t know what to expect and with this it
just shows the commitment from Netstar to say that we are a technology partner, and
not just a tracking company.”
As customer demand increases, Netstar plans to expand and roll out additional
command centres, ultimately separating the Bureaus into dedicated vehicle recovery
and fleet managed services. A second centre is scheduled for later in 2024.
