What to look for in an ELD provider

The time has come to upgrade your Electronic Logging Device (ELD). Whatever your reason, more features, better reporting or a higher level of customer support, there are many options to choose from and many factors to consider when choosing.

Coretex ELD has been helping fleets log miles for few years now and we’ve learnt a little along the way.

Here are some of our top tips when it comes to looking for your next ELD provider –

 

Compliance

This is a big one. The first thing that you need to check when choosing your next ELD is that it is among the list of FMCSA’s certified ELD providers. If it’s not, you will not be compliant with the US ELD mandate.

 

Feature set and industry suitability 

Depending on your industry, you will want a ELD provider with knowledge and experience in your market. For example, if you are operating a mixed fleet, you want your provider to have the appropriate technology and products for food and beverage transport as well as ELD. Whether the provider has experienced staff that understand the challenges and issues that you face on a day-to-day basis is useful not only from a customer support perspective but they will also have better understanding about how to use your wealth of data to your advantage. Flexible rulesets, custom prioritized alerts, and advanced geofences are all things you may want to consider in your ELD provider.

 

Integrations

Depending on who you go with, different providers will have different levels of integrations. Some will have a set list, while some will be more flexible and be able cater to your needs. If you need specialized integrations it’s worth considering how much experience a provider has in that area, especially if you require specific hardware.

It’s worth thinking about whether you want to use one provider for everything or different providers for different needs. Using one provider gives you benefits such as single-sign-on, but other providers may have expertise in specific areas that are beneficial to you.

 

Reporting and extra benefits

With ELD comes a lot of data, especially for large fleets. This can be overwhelming and a missed opportunity if you don’t know what to do with it. Used correctly it can increase productivity, efficiency, and help with any other business goals.

Different providers will offer different levels of service to help you use and interpret your data ranging from little assistance to dedicated customer success teams and custom dashboards designed to make you get the most out of your data.

 

Install times

How difficult installs are differs across telematics providers and products. Some products are easy to install yourself, some require specialized install teams that may charge extra fees. Install teams can be be busy and you may need to work around their schedules to get your ELD installed so this is something worth taking into consideration.

 

To find out more about Coretex ELD, get in touch with our team today.