2014 marks Cartrack South Africa's 10th anniversary, representing 10 years of tracking innovation and customer focus, with over 14,000 vehicles returned to their rightful owners. Cartrack, relying on significant investments in technology and in-house recycling and support departments, has maintained one of the highest independent audited recovery rates in the highly competitive vehicle tracking and recycling industry, currently at 94%.
The brainchild of business person Zak Calisto, Cartrack began its journey in 2004 with 30 cars on the system. Cartrack is focused on providing a leading technology platform and talented people to support customer service and rapidly expand its business, both geographically and in terms of new customers. Today, Cartrack serves more than 350,000 vehicles in its fleet management, stolen vehicle recovery and insurance telematics services, with full operations in 16 other countries around the world.
Jerry Pierce, Operations Manager at Cartrack Pty Ltd, said: "We have more people, more customers and better technology in the 16 countries in which we operate than we did 10 years ago. While the world may have changed, Cartrack's core remains the same, and that is our commitment to providing excellent service to our customers. ”
While having great technology is essential to delivering a superior product in the market, this must be supported by differentiation that really matters. "We pride ourselves on our recycling speed, thanks to the fact that our recycling team is in-house rather than outsourced. Vehicular crime is an emotional issue and people want to be confident that they have the best protection when needed. Technology, service, response time and recovery rates all go hand in hand with the trust our customers place in us," Jerry added.
Investment recovery
Cartrack continues its pursuit of excellence in a highly competitive market and launched its own in-house recycling team in 2010. "We made the decision in 2008 and spent the next two years recruiting the best people, training them and investing in the necessary equipment," Jerry explains. As a growing business, it was a big financial investment for us, but it turned out to be the right decision. This is surely one of the reasons why we are able to provide excellent service to our customers and maintain a high recycling rate at all times. ”
Ten years of technological innovation
THE GROWTH OF SOUTH AFRICA'S TELECOMMUNICATIONS SECTOR OVER THE PAST DECADE HAS BEEN IMPRESSIVE. WE ARE SEEING CELLULAR (GSM) TECHNOLOGY GROW RAPIDLY AND BECOME MORE AFFORDABLE. THIS, IN TURN, HAS DRIVEN THE GROWTH OF THE TRACKING INDUSTRY IN SOUTH AFRICA.
From a fleet management perspective, the rapid development and convergence of telecommunications services has enabled Cartrack to expand its scope to include comprehensive telematics services since 2006. The powerful web-based system provides fleet managers with a wide range of features and benefits to optimize fleet and driver productivity and monitor driver behavior and route deviation. But the real growth in telematics lies in the insurance industry. Insurance telematics allows insurers to better manage driver behavior, significantly reducing the rate of loss due to accidents in their customer base.
"Cartrack has a clear advantage in insurance telematics because it can feed back to customers and insurers in real time, rather than delayed weekly or monthly reports, so fleet owners and insurers can actually influence driver behavior in real time," Jerry said. Given South Africa's worrying road fatality statistics, we expect significant developments in the field of telematics in managing driver behavior, risk and liability. ”
Cartrack's dedicated research and development (R&D) team has pioneered many technological advancements within the industry. This is one of the reasons why it maintains one of the highest recycling rates in the industry. The miniaturization of technology and superior installation methods also mean that Cartrack devices are harder to find and remove by criminals.
"This, combined with our response time, makes it difficult for criminals to steal Cartrack-protected vehicles," Jerry said. That's why last year we were able to launch the industry's first 'take-back warranty', which means we will pay our customers up to R150,000 if we are unable to recover the vehicle." Our customers appreciate the fact that we hold ourselves accountable to them."
Cartrack leverages custom technology developed in-house to run its platform, including stolen vehicle recovery, fleet management, and telematics. In recovery operations, this technology allows three-way communication between the control room, the ground recovery team and the flight attendant. In addition, it provides detailed information on the progress of the tracked vehicles and recovery teams in real time. Jerry explained: "This has greatly improved the speed, precision and accuracy with which ground vehicles reach the stolen vehicles. ”
Prepare for growth
The company is preparing for further global expansion, and although the South African tracking market is fundamentally different from overseas markets, the technology and functionality are essentially the same.
Jerry explains: "Vehicle theft is not a major problem in Europe. Our Cartrack branches in Singapore, Spain, Portugal and Poland are primarily focused on cars
