When I explain how and why we developed ClearSky Smart Fleet™, I always mention the need for it to provide actionable data. But what exactly is “actionable data?” And why is it so important?
Actionable data is information that you can easily and effectively use. Throughout our development process, we learned that everybody views actionable data differently. What's actionable for me might not be actionable for you.
That’s why everything on the ClearSky Smart Fleet portal is completely customizable. You can change your entire layout to match your preferences. You can save dashboards in different views. That makes it simple to save a sales dashboard or service dashboard, for example, to see the most relevant data for various elements of fleet management.
And, with the help of ClearSky Fleet Smart’s mobile app, you can directly interact with the machines near you to get that data. Because we’ve standardized connectivity hardware with your new machine purchase, you can simply use your mobile device’s Bluetooth capability to accomplish so many tasks. Here are just a few examples:
Finding the Right Machine. To locate a particular machine, you can simply use the “Detect” feature on the app and light up the machine you’re looking for or beep its horn or both, with the option of an added audio cue. At JLG, we use this capability just like our customers do. We need to account for a specific machine on a lot where hundreds of identical models are stored. Instead of walking from unit to unit and looking at every single serial number, we can use the ClearSky Smart Fleet app to honk the machine’s horn or turn on its lights within seconds.
Machine Status. With the embedded IoT system now integrated into the standard machine control system, insights can be quickly and directly delivered to many more groups across a rental organization than telematics has ever done.
Say I’m a fuel truck driver, and I show up at a site where I’m supposed to “refuel the telehandler.” But there are 20 of them, and I don’t know which one needs fuel. Another simple yet highly impactful status is if you’ve plugged in your scissor lifts. This quick status check can make or break the productivity of tomorrow for the expensive workforce relying on delivering rent-ready equipment to their customers. This technology tells you within seconds with a visual status color indication. The same goes for a service tech or a branch manager. It’s an example of how we’ve expanded the concept of telematics into real-world applications that provide greater ROI.
Coming Soon: Next-level Fleet Information & Interactivity. Traditional telematics has geofencing capabilities, and typically, those geofences are all shapes and sizes because no two job sites are identical. To geofence multiple machines on a job site, you must first assign a location to each machine individually when it arrives and remove it when it leaves, which is tedious. People tend not to use the geofencing feature simply because of that fact.
To make geofencing easier with ClearSky Smart Fleet, JLG leverages an automated Bluetooth mesh network of interactivity between all units that are present. As machines are delivered, move around a job site and come into contact with each other, they automatically create or join an existing site network which is now filterable. That means our customers can get job-site-level interactions, branch-level interactions and more. The machines create their own site network geofence border that changes from moment to moment as they move around, basically automating the geofencing process.
Online Express. If you’re a JLG owner or operator, you may already be familiar with our Online Express aftermarket e-commerce site. It’s where you go if you want to purchase a part, learn about your machine’s service needs, find parts manuals and so on. Now, we’ve integrated that functionality into ClearSky Smart Fleet.
Say you’re a service technician and you get a diagnostic trouble code of 2634, which refers to issues with a foot switch. What do you do with that info? With ClearSky Smart Fleet, you can click on the knowledge article that accompanies that trouble code. You’ll also get links to the recommended parts to fix the foot switch. You can click on those links and add the parts to your shopping cart right there in the app. This type of intuitive, integrated experience is what ClearSky Smart Fleet is all about.
