If you’ve been involved in fleet management over the past decade, you’ve probably heard the term telematics. But unless you're working directly with the technology, it’s easy to miss exactly what it involves - and how it can support safer, more efficient operations.
This article explains what telematics is, how it works, and the practical benefits it offers - particularly for organisations operating vehicle fleets across sectors like government, utilities, education, and public services.
Why you might be looking into telematics
Maybe you're looking for better ways to understand how your vehicles are being used. Or you’re exploring solutions to help manage compliance, improve driver behaviour, or support lone workers more effectively.
Smartrak's approach
At Smartrak, we live and breathe telematics and GPS solutions. Our vision is to empower people with the insights these technologies provide. We understand that data is an integral part of managing a successful fleet. In fact, our data regularly enables our clients to reduce their fleet size by 10% while improving asset utilisation. These are the insights that telematics and the data it reveals can provide.
Telematics is actually a multi-disciplinary field. It combines telecommunications, transport, road safety, engineering, and computer science. This means that it has the potential to solve many fleet management and transportation challenges.
In practice, this means collecting and using real-time data to answer questions like:
Rather than relying on assumptions or manual tracking, telematics helps organisations build a clearer picture of fleet performance and safety.
Perhaps you’re already tracking some of this information in a spreadsheet. However, as your fleet grows, manually tracking fleet data becomes more and more of a time sink. Plus, there’s always the risk of errors when manually entering data.
A telematics solution takes the hassle of manual fleet management and opens the door to many more insights that you probably haven’t yet considered.
Telematics systems rely on a combination of in-vehicle GPS hardware and cloud-based software. The hardware records data such as location, speed, acceleration, and odometer readings, then transmits it to a central platform where fleet managers can access and analyse it.
There are different types of devices, depending on the level of insight needed:
These devices connect with fleet management software that aggregates and visualises the data, making it easier to identify trends, flag issues, and plan ahead.
There are many reasons why an organisation might decide to implement a telematics solution. Surprisingly, knowing the exact location of staff isn’t high on that list. Here are the top three drivers behind telematics adoption:
Telematics helps identify which vehicles are being used most - and least - often. This allows organisations to right-size their fleets, adjust pool vehicle availability, and plan for future needs.
Example: Meridian Energy discovered, through trip data, that many journeys were short distance. This insight gave them the confidence to introduce electric vehicles into their fleet.
Tracking vehicle usage helps ensure maintenance is scheduled based on actual wear and tear, not just calendar dates. This supports both safety and cost-efficiency, and can replace unreliable manual logs.
It also makes it easier to stay on top of renewals such as registration and WOFs, especially across larger fleets.
With regulatory requirements continuing to evolve, telematics helps demonstrate duty-of-care and compliance around safe driving, vehicle servicing, and lone worker safety. It also supports accurate record-keeping and reporting for audits.
Some organisations can apply for tax breaks if the vehicles spend time driving or operating on private roads. Australia taxes fuel automatically at the petrol pump. This tax is based on the assumption that you’re going to be using infrastructure such as roads and highways.
Telematics provides an accurate way to track when your vehicles have travelled off-road. This was the case with Wannon Water. Their fleet spends a large portion of their time travelling off-road. However, they previously had no way to accurately track what percentage of trips were eligible to claim Fuel Tax Credits. As a result, they were constantly under reporting because it wasn’t worth the time and effort to prepare accurate claims. Smartrak was able to use tracking information to provide them with the evidence they needed to make accurate claims.
Wannon Water was able to increase their claims from $500 to $4,000 per month, and as a bonus, were able to use the data to back-date claims for the previous two years.
The value of telematics isn’t just in the data - it’s in how that data is used. Some organisations use it to reduce fleet size, others to enhance staff safety, improve resource planning, or transition confidently to EVs.
For teams managing drivers in remote or high-risk environments, telematics also plays a critical role in ensuring workers are visible, supported, and able to raise alerts if needed.
Some Smartrak customers have used the insights generated from our telematics solutions to reduce the size of their fleet by roughly 10%. In Australia, that’s an average of four vehicles in every corporate fleet.
Smartrak offers a comprehensive suite of fleet telematics solutions.
We have a range of GPS devices, ranging from the plug-and-play OBD-II, Automatic Vehicle Locators (AVLs). Both of these offers different yet complementary set of features, so a combination of devices might be suitable based upon your organisation’s needs.
For electric vehicle or mixed fleets, Smartrak's Nextrak device is essential. Nextrak delivers real-time data from electric vehicles directly into Smartrak, providing instant visibility of critical EV information to maximise utilisation and ensure the efficiency of your EV operations.
Our safety and compliance solutions - features like driver behaviour reporting, lone worker support, Crash Detection, and automated maintenance - help ensure vehicles and people are safe and supported.
All our telematics solutions also integrate into the Smartrak Visual Intelligence Suite, which enables users to easily locate vehicles and access informative GIS layers for additional planning information.
Now that you have a clear understanding of what telematics is and how it works, you can see how it plays a vital role in managing modern fleets. At Smartrak, we apply telematics to support your operational goals - whether that's improving vehicle utilisation, enhancing driver safety, simplifying compliance, or supporting remote and lone workers.
By turning fleet data into practical insights, Smartrak helps organisations make informed decisions that protect people, reduce risk, and improve efficiency.
