Powerful Analytics Give Fleets Bold New Advantages in Teletrac's Fleet Director 8.5

GARDEN GROVE, Calif., Aug. 2, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Teletrac customers gain important new advantages with today's release of Fleet Director 8.5, the latest version of Teletrac's industry-leading fleet management telematics solution. Managers can now improve critical profit-and-loss factors such as fuel consumption and safety performance by using new trending analytics in Fleet Director 8.5 to instantly spot performance peaks and valleys over any recent three-month period. Fleet Director 8.5 also delivers new, Microsoft Silverlight® mapping that's faster, more interactive and more detailed than ever. For example, dispatchers can now track vehicles more easily in unfamiliar locales by rotating maps' orientation in "bird's eye" view offering realistic perspectives on streets and road signs. Teletrac simultaneously announced release of its latest in-cab color terminal, featuring a QWERTY keyboard and other improvements such as predictive text for quicker, easier data and address entry.

New insights with trending analytics
Powerful trending analytics in Fleet Director 8.5, an industry first, propel at-a-glance insights into the fourth dimension — time.  Now, managers can sharpen decision making and focus attention where it's needed most by quickly answering questions like these: To what degree does fuel consumption rise and fall with changes in safety performance over time? Is this consistent fleetwide, or does it vary? Do excess idle time "hot spots" show up in recurring patterns, such as with certain drivers in specific locales?  Do speeding violations show patterns — among drivers, vehicles, locales, times of day, highway vs. street — that yield clues to improving safety?  Can operations personnel utilize vehicles more efficiently and can monitoring variables such as PTO (power take off) impact productivity? Managers can instantly spot variations among nearly a dozen factors over any recent three-month time window — revealing with unprecedented precision where attention can trim costs, improve operations and safety performance.

Selecting dates/times and any specified group of vehicles, Fleet Director 8.5 users can interactively trend variables including miles per gallon, speed violations, driver incidents such as  harsh stopping and hard braking, exceptions, fault codes, utilization, idle time, miles driven, engine time, and travel time.  Six months of rolling data are instantly available; older data can be easily restored for up to three years.  Users can view data in hourly or daily increments, and also filter and search on trend reports.

Faster, more detailed interactive mapping
Fleet Director 8.5 extends Teletrac's longtime lead in telematics mapping with faster, more flexible map rendering in tile mode and more interactive mapping for a more intuitive experience, helping dispatchers stay on top of fast-changing situations. MultiView™ tiling allows dispatchers to view multiple maps on the same screen while independently controlling each tile.  In bird's eye view, for example, users can smoothly rotate their orientation. Animated views offer more realistic perspective on streets, road signs and other features — a significant aid when tracking vehicles and navigating in unfamiliar locales.

In Fleet Director 8.5, Teletrac migrated to map display technology based entirely on the Silverlight software platform, enabling these and other user enhancements such as new colors for greater clarity.  Maps can be quickly customized by enabling/disabling real-time traffic, clusters or individual landmarks, setting different zoom levels for vehicle and landmarks, and toggling routes on and off.

Flexible self-service alerts
Fleet Director 8.5 gives users other advantages, such as highly customizable self-service fleet alerts. Users can now set alerts via the Web which are highly configurable for one or all vehicles.  Users can individually set each type of alert for specific vehicles or subfleets. Watch lists can now include a user-defined subfleet or group of vehicles while including or excluding specific drivers. Alerts can be sent directly to any mobile device or desktop.

Quick, unlimited landmark imports
Landmarks let dispatchers and drivers stay oriented using their own familiar points of reference. In Fleet Director 8.5, Teletrac makes working with landmarks quicker and easier than ever. Streamlined screens for managing landmarks let users group their landmarks and display them under a group name.  These screens run faster, and users can quickly import unlimited landmarks in bulk mode.  Fleet Director 8.5 automatically updates imported landmarks to existing routes.

New QWERTY in-cab color terminal
Along with Fleet Director 8.5, Teletrac announced release of its latest in-cab color terminal, featuring a QWERTY keyboard and other improvements for quicker, easier data entry. The new keyboard saves drivers time by enabling them to more quickly enter addresses and tap out messages in-cab. Teletrac integrates two-way messaging with location and date/time to archive a comprehensive record of driver and vehicle activity.

For additional information regarding the new features of Fleet Director 8.5 or to schedule a free live demo, contact Teletrac at +1-800-500-6009 or visit www.teletrac.net.

About Fleet Director and Teletrac
Already proven and trusted by more than 10,000 fleets in the US alone, Fleet Director saves fleet owners time, money, and reduces their carbon footprint. Teletrac customers report up to 30% lower fuel usage, an average of 15% less driver overtime, 12% higher productivity and less unauthorized vehicle use.
Teletrac is headquartered in Garden Grove, CA.  For additional information, visit www.teletrac.net.