What Van? Britain's biggest and best van buyers' guide

Taking the Risk Management Award is SmartAnalytics by SmartWitness. Recognising the increasing demand for data from fleet managers, SmartWitness launched SmartAnalytics in September 2020. The product is analytics software powered by artificial intelligence (AI), which can provide better insights and actionable data for fleet managers, particularly those operating a larger number of vehicles.

The launch followed on from what the company claims was a hugely successful pilot scheme involving 25,000 commercial vehicles, which saw 15% fewer accidents, a 30% improvement in productivity, a 7% reduction in fuel and maintenance costs, compliance involvement improved by 50%, accountability improved by 20%, driving behaviour scores up 14%, workplace satisfaction up 15%, and workplace engagement up by 25%.

While other products also analyse driver behaviour, SmartAnalytics uses multiple data sources to achieve a more accurate illustration. A company spokesperson explains: “Standard telematics evaluation methods only use G-sensors and GPS, but SmartAnalytics is able to take into account factors such as road type, elevation, weather conditions, traffic patterns, and differentiate between city and rural traffic density. This is essential to get the full picture for van fleets. For example, a driver accelerating hard to filter into faster-moving traffic on a motorway would be written down as a bad behaviour on a traditional system, but SmartAnalytics takes into account the change of road type and would deem this a necessary course of action and would strike it out as a false positive.”

Explaining the refining process, the spokesperson adds: “An artificial intelligence filter ‘scrubs, cleans and filters’ the raw data, eliminating false positives by comparing input from other sources. A ‘machine learning’ filter then identifies trends and patterns in driver behaviour and compares risk across the fleet and creates league tables. Over time, with the comparison of historical information the identification of events becomes even more accurate, and predictive risk modelling assigns priority around the most at-risk drivers.

“Using a ‘funnel’ principle, a fleet manager is alerted to issues with the delivery of concise league tables, allowing them to concentrate training on where it is required, and to identify other risk factors. Previously, fleet managers would spend hours and hours going through telematics data; now they get a fully edited report sent to them daily (or weekly, it’s entirely up to the fleet manager) with easy-to-read league tables. These tables show the pressure points in your organisation and problems can be dealt with before they arise with driver education programmes.”