Every day, millions of data points flow out of your vehicles and into your fleet management system. They’re there every time you pull up an analytics dashboard or run a mileage report to help inform your decisions.
But is it helping you make the right decisions?
Not necessarily. When it comes to making the right decisions — at the right time — collecting data is only the beginning. What really matters is what you do with it.
When we started building SCALAR, we knew our true power lies in data. Not just in having it — but in our dedication to turning it into intelligent and reliable systems that give a whole new meaning to fleet efficiency. Today, we’ll take you behind the scenes and show you how we do it.
Let’s take a closer look.
Ever played a game of Minecraft? The basic concept is simple: players gather materials and use them to craft tools and build anything from rudimentary shelters to entire cities.
Imagine raw data as the raw materials you’d harvest in a game of Minecraft — wood, stone, iron, and more. On their own, they may not mean much. But, when processed and put together in the right ways, they make up the tools you need to build your world.
So, if you were building a fleet management system, your raw materials would include things like real-time data (speed, location, fuel levels, harsh braking events — to name just a few) or historical data (such as a maintenance date or type of service performed). With them, you could create a tool for calculating vehicle health, another for fuel consumption, a third for driver behavior, and so on. You can then use all these resources to build more elaborate structures — or more advanced data models — like optimizing routes, predicting problems, or automating decisions.
Before applying advanced data science to create unique insights, you need to transform and organize the data.
In Minecraft, this would be the equivalent of sorting all your resources into chests to keep them safe and easy to find. First, you may want to repair damaged tools or get rid of surplus items. Or you could turn some wooden logs into planks and store those separately to have ready for later use. Then you might choose to label your chests, so you know what’s what: tools, clothing, minerals, random stuff that doesn’t fit in any other category.
To do this, SCALAR uses a sophisticated data quality tool which we have built in-house for this purpose. Here’s how it works:
This process of ensuring we only work with high-quality, trusted data is the foundation of the SCALAR platform. Without it, it would be impossible to build efficient and reliable prediction and automation models to help take your fleet to the next level.
Now let’s talk about where all this data magic happens.
What makes SCALAR so unique is that it uses innovative data management architecture to work with data. To explain this, let’s briefly go over the evolution of data architecture:
To manage their data, businesses traditionally use two types of systems: data lakes and data warehouses. Think of a data warehouse as a super-organized storage room you build in Minecraft to store your resources in neatly stacked chests — much like you would in a real-life warehouse. Everything is organized and easy to grab whenever you need it.
A data lake, on the other hand, is like a gigantic chest where all your resources are just dumped into one big messy pile. You may have everything you need, but it’s much harder to quickly find what you’re looking for.
The SCALAR Lakehouse uses a highly advanced data lakehouse architecture that blends the organizational features of a data warehouse with the flexibility of a data lake under one unified system. It’s like having the ultimate Minecraft chest where you can randomly throw in anything you like, and it automatically sorts and organizes everything for you.
By using a lakehouse to build SCALAR services, we’re making sure that data is always in one place, always accurate, and always up to date. In this way, we can store, process, and analyze vast amounts of data with incredible speed and efficiency, regardless of the data source — whether it’s truck or driver data, our own proprietary data, or external data like traffic or weather information. To you and your fleet, this means you get truly reliable, truly data-driven insights faster than ever. Be it for optimizing everyday tasks in a matter of seconds, or for making higher-level strategic decisions when it really matters.
At the same time, this structure allows us to continuously innovate and build new and more sophisticated features in record time. That’s why you can rely on SCALAR to bring you better and more intelligent services on a regular basis.
It also means your data is safer with us. One of the great advantages of the SCALAR Lakehouse is that it provides a single point of access, so we can easily control who can see or edit data and centrally apply all the regulatory checks and balances. Your data is always encrypted — whether it’s sitting in storage or being analyzed. And because it never leaves the lakehouse, there are no data copies in multiple systems that would increase exposure to risk.
SCALAR, being part of ZF, has vehicle data written all over its DNA. ZF is one of the largest global suppliers of vehicle systems, meaning we have access to a vast wealth of data from the components we produce — and the in-house expertise to interpret it correctly to help you gain deeper knowledge about your business.
But we don’t just stop there. Our dedicated teams are heavily invested in continuously building and testing new algorithms and machine learning models to make the most of the data available, so you can run your business even more effectively — from predicting when a trailer will break down, to routing trucks in real time, to a fleet that can automatically adapt to unforeseen situations in a matter of seconds.
This commitment to using the latest technology and constantly pushing the boundaries of what’s possible means your fleet is always one step ahead — getting smarter, faster, and more efficient every day.
Want to see the true power of data in action and learn how SCALAR can help you increase fleet efficiency and cut operational costs like never before? Get in touch with our experts today for a free consultation.
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