Can BYOD Make Australian Roads Safe?
Well, arguably yes! If everyone wants to grab an iPhone, then what’s wrong in their consumerization? Rather, it is pretty beneficial to achieve organizational goals and this goes with no exception to safe trucking, definitely. Flexibility, efficiency, cost-effectiveness and more importantly, increased productivity all are gearshift of this heavy trucking device. Undoubtedly, if we’ve better monitoring systems in place, we can drive towards a better and safe trucking future.
WOW, road safety with an iPhone? How? What it has to do with road safety? Nothing Questionable?
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is a policy shift most commonly adopted by IT-fired businesses to officiate personally owned mobile devices for creating a synchronized working environment. With a controlled integration, tracking and communication can be as personalized as the text chats are in our daily life. And the employee’s empowerment is invigorating when they’d be allowed to use their devices in workplace. Ultimately, the speedy and efficient transactions should further endorse the validation plans of this technology acquisition.
Fleet managers and trucking coordinators can vitalize the communication process with their truck drivers through this enhanced technology and this can significantly reduce the costs associated with back-office operations in this regard. Monitoring and tracking can even be easy as touch keys. Fuel efficiency and speed limits are even navigable. Freight forwarders and fleet owners can ensure the safe delivery of dangerous goods/hazardous materials by mapping the route guides for their connected vehicles. The device can further be equipped for avoiding traffic incidents by guiding drivers through perilous and foggy roads. This all accounts for what we call voluntary product stewardship.
American truckers have recently been very vocal when debating pro- and anti-BYOD stances. Those who supporting BYOD-driven trucking future, continue to maintain that we must not ignore the efficiency, cost-cutting folders and the potential increase in outcomes if we align our business strategies to make this model a best fit. But this is the voice of BYOD advocacy groups.
And the hardcore critics of BYOD counter by raising concerns about the intellectual property rights, misuse of information, deciding the bearers of additional arrears in a case if the device is lost or stolen, and in the long course, the illusionism of cost-effectiveness.
This divided highway between pro- and anti-BYOD driving forces takes a sharp turn when the black box vehicles enter into this technology zone and Greg McGarry, managing director of DriveProfiler, shows red signals for BYOD. This debating point will be the key emphasis in the Telematics for Fleet Management USA 2013 where the discussion about telematics mega trends will clear the vision, hopefully.
Thinking like a truck driver, however, it’d be hard to believe that anyone would resist iPhone mania. Just imagining how they could feel:
Jack: hey Nick, what phone have you got? Have you got GPS in your phone?
Nick: Yeah dude, I dare to touch when I need to track. And I’m lovin’ it!
Jack: Hold on, have you got BYOD?
Nick: Oh man, you got it, right here, fueling, tracking, speeding, just name it! I got all in one device, looks like a magic. And my boss is even happy. What else I want?
Still, Australia has to decide what is conscionable: BYOD or Black Box?