According to the National Private Truck Council, in the US alone, there are more than 200,000 companies operating private fleets with nearly 8.5m vehicles such as cargo delivery trucks and utility servicing vans.
Despite this large volume, fleet managers at many of those companies don’t have the right technologies to monitor and manage their fleets effectively.
Raven Connected, a Canada-based company providing real-time vehicle diagnostics and live video surveillance to better manage fleets, is changing that.
Raven created a cellular IoT solution that can turn any vehicle into a connected one. Raven provides fleet managers instant access to everything they need to know about their vehicle fleet, including real-time vehicle diagnostics, delivery status updates, and two-way video monitoring.
Fleet managers can mitigate fleet risk and liability by collecting video evidence of break-ins and collisions, as well as driver behavior. Today, Raven operates across every state and province in North America.
Raven’s engineering team knew their service would be data-intensive thanks to dash-mounted cameras regularly recording video and moving it to the cloud.
Raven needed a cellular connectivity partner who enabled them to deliver a reliable connected car service to their customers. Beyond scalable data prices, Raven needed a predictive pricing model so customers could easily budget for their telecom costs. Cellular network operators put the cost at a prohibitive $1/MB for a base plan, with additional charges for plan overages.
Twilio, though, gave Raven an entirely predictable and competitive pricing model that worked. Now armed with pay-as-you-go pricing, seamless international roaming, and data pooling (across all vehicles in a fleet), Raven has a sustainable business and a pricing model that supports customers as they grow. That, said CEO Dan Carruthers, has made a major difference.
“Twilio gave us a scalable and predictable pricing structure,” he said. “Since we started using Twilio, we have been able to profitably grow our business in the double-digits annually.”
Beyond competitive and scalable pricing, Raven chose Twilio for its reliable APIs that help automate Raven’s operations.
Raven leverages Twilio’s APIs to offer a superior customer experience that starts from the time of the order. Twilio SIMs are installed in every Raven device and allow Raven to automatically associate each device with a customer’s record. The SIMs can be provisioned and automatically activated via APIs, so Raven’s customers can use their devices out-of-the-box without talking to a customer support agent.
Twilio’s console gives Raven’s support agents the visibility and tools to instantly locate devices and even reset them remotely when needed. With Twilio, Raven resolves customer issues 2X faster, lowering overall support costs.
“With Twilio almost everything is API-based and automated,” said Director of R&D Daniel Crawford. “It has simplified our customer experience and enabled us to scale by removing almost all manual steps. Now, new devices are deployed 80% faster.”
[Twilio] has simplified our customer experience and enabled us to scale by removing almost all manual steps. Now, new devices are deployed 80% faster.