Apex BI brings clarity, control to Fidelity SecureDrive’s IOT fleet costs

Neil Buckley, MD, Apex BI.

---

Fidelity Services Group, southern Africa’s largest integrated security solutions provider and the industry leader in protection innovation, is using Apex BI’s Clarity IoT platform to underpin its innovative Fidelity SecureDrive solution – an offering from Fidelity that delivers insurance telematics, smart fleet management and data insights. Fidelity SecureDrive extends Fidelity’s well-known residential and commercial security brand into the fleet management space, providing fleet owners with a safer, smarter and more connected fleet experience.

“Clearly the lynchpin of our Fidelity SecureDrive solution is the free flow of data between the vehicle and the control room. This means the vehicle can be monitored in real-time to oversee movements, enforce route or geographical policies and so on. At any one time, we have tens of thousands of SIM cards either in active operation or held in stock from multiple suppliers, all of which must be monitored and managed,” says Wahl Bartmann, CEO, Fidelity. “For us, it’s crucial to have accurate near real-time insights to manage the costs and services associated with the SIMs so that we can keep costs down for our customers, while also ensuring that the solution is optimised.”

Aside from the sheer number of SIMs in use, a related challenge is that they come from multiple network providers, including local and international providers. Fidelity needs to know where each of these SIMs is located, who the customer is, what the contract terms are and so on. If the SIMs are not properly configured and assigned to the right tariff structures, they can attract dramatically higher costs.

“The nature of an IOT ecosystem such as the Fidelity SecureDrive environment, is the inherent amount of disparate data originating from various sources. Some examples of this data include CRM application data, stock information and financial data, not to mention the large amounts of network provider cost and consumption data received every day, throughout the day. Providing Fidelity with a single view of all the data was a game-changer because it made managing everything so much easier, and eliminated the need to manually capture the data,” says Regan Erasmus, Operations Director, Apex BI. “Also, if any issues in the data are identified, Fidelity can fix the problem at source, thus ensuring that the data quality is constantly improving.”

Bartmann adds: “The consolidation of our data into a single platform has not only aligned all of Fidelity’s internal stakeholders and yielded cost and process efficiencies, but also the automation and centralisation of the data has created time and resource efficiencies for staff. They are now freed up to spend less time on internal tasks and more time delivering value and a positive customer experience to our Fidelity SecureDrive customer base.

“The accurate, timely data provided by Apex BI’s Clarity IoT platform has enabled us to effectively scale the business, consolidating several business processes and creating a single, centralised data store which can be used to support effective decision-making and enhance our offering to customers. Additionally, now that the platform is in place and the data is available accurately and on demand, we can now – at the click of a button – establish easily which SIM cards are actually in use and being charged for, versus those that are dormant and could be cancelled or suspended,” concludes Bartmann.