SAP develops new software to assist connected vehicle management and IoT

Enterprise application software provider SAP has introduced SAP Vehicle Insights, an application that offers a variety of services to manage connected vehicles, including basic data analytics that can be used for fleet analytics, vehicle diagnostics and mobility-as-a-service scenarios, pushing live mobility to the next level.

The company claims SAP Vehicle Insights enables companies to use information about entire fleets and car-specific key data like gear recognition, fuel stops, scores for economical driving or heat mapping to improve not only the management of their fleets but also of individual vehicles. With predictive maintenance functions for mileage and tyre wear, repairs can be planned more efficiently, thus reducing costs. 

SAP Vehicle Insights is claimed to provide superior business agility by combining the increasing data generated by connected vehicles with external and a company’s existing business data. In connection with real-time analytics and prediction capabilities, the application generates valuable insights for companies and enables them to shorten their time to market for scenarios involving building connected vehicles.

“Vehicles and, to an increasing extent, machines need to be integrated in digital business processes. Whether it is a truck on the road, a forklift at the warehouse or an excavator at a construction site, everything needs to be operated in the most efficient way possible. We help customers not only to rapidly develop and implement these scenarios for their businesses, but also to validate them in the market and scale them accordingly over a short period of time,” said Stephan Brand, senior vice-president, Products & Innovation Internet of Things (IoT) and Moving Assets, SAP.

These scenarios include conventional areas of logistics optimisation as well as management of commercial fleets, which are able to use vehicle data like geo-positions, load weight, temperature or the estimated time of arrival. Additional services for geo-fencing or speed-limit analysis support new business processes and models in the fields of digital farming and telematics for insurance.           

“When designing and implementing an IoT insurance product based on a complex scoring model, flexibility, scalability and reliability are key. Thanks to the open and flexible architecture of SAP Vehicle Insights we were able to achieve this goal in a short time,” said Sven Roehl, executive vice president, msg global solutions, Canada Inc.

This flexible application is based on SAP HANA Cloud Platform and collects, stores, maps and analyses real-time sensor data from vehicles and equipment. This data can then be integrated or consolidated with both external and customer data. Customers can combine real-time telematics data with their business processes.

Minimal disruption to existing systems

SAP says Vehicle Insights enables innovative business processes with minimal disruption to existing systems. Standardised web-enabled services with open integration reduce costs through improved operations, planning and control. This helps create new business models, increase business agility and optimise fleet operations. SAP Vehicle Insights is addressing complex challenges for a fast-moving new ecosystem around IoT, connectivity, advanced analytics, new partnerships and mobility concepts of the future.

“The significant growth of connected devices globally and their impact on our daily life show that the Internet of Things is already reality. The IoT creates endless opportunities for insurers to mitigate risks and retain existing and attract new customers. We see that SAP HANA Cloud Platform together with SAP Vehicle Insights will play a leading role leveraging IoT in financial services,” said Peter Umscheid, co-CEO, msg global solutions ag.

“SAP Vehicle Insights allowed us to evaluate our ideas in a very agile setup. The cloud technology is innovative, the framework allows rapid prototyping and the proven SAP know-how enables excellent scalability. We have promising ideas for the next steps,” said Dr Klaus Oster, director, IT Management, Daimler Buses and Mercedes-Benz Vans.