Telematics and tracking specialist Vimcar is planning to introduce further innovations over the coming year as it connects its 100,000th company vehicle.

Vimcar founder and managing director Andreas Schneider said the 100k connected car milestone was down to the hard work of the team as well as the support of its SME customers

Founded in 2013 and launched in the UK last year, Vimcar aims to redefine fleet management for European SMEs by digitalising the company car of the future. The business has already recorded more than 222 million journeys, equating to over 2.7 billion miles; it’s calculated to have saved SMEs more than 141 years in time by helping them to optimise the efficiency of their fleets. All of which has been captured in a new video.

Vimcar founder and managing director Andreas Schneider said the 100k connected car milestone was down to the hard work of the team as well as the support of its SME customers; its SaaS telematics solutions are aimed at fleets of 1-200 vehicles.

Andreas continued: “The future of the company vehicle lies in its resource-efficient use. We have the data and use it to help our customers inform decisions around e-mobility and resource efficiency. For example, our software can be used to analyse the CO2 emissions of a fleet, while a utilisation analysis identifies unused or less efficient company cars and helps to optimise the size of the fleet based on data. Software-supported route optimisation can save valuable miles travelled and time.”

Vimcar also has big plans for the future as it looks towards its next target of 500,000 connected cars, with a clear focus on using telematics data to inform the move towards e-fleets

Schneider said: “We have found that innovation centred around customer experience is key to our company’s long-term growth. Despite the challenges posed by Covid, this customer-centric focus ensured that in 2020 we had a retention rate of 120% and a lower churn rate in the same year compared to 2019. We will therefore continue with this approach into 2021.”

Vimcar’s key plans for 2021 including updating its fleet tracking software on a quarterly basis – at the very least – in line with customer feedback.

It’s also looking at new integrated customer onboarding. Schneider said: “Previous customer research has suggested that those who use a greater number of our products’ functionalities and features generally have a higher retention rate. As such we are planning an upcoming software update that will automatically offer new customers an integrated product onboarding. This update will give users a virtual tour of our products and highlight key features and how to use them.”

Vimcar will also add increased functionality to its mobile app, ensuring managers do not have to be at their desk to optimise their fleet.

Other innovations planned for 2021 include offering a public API, so the firm’s clients’ IT teams can integrate its software more easily into their internal operations; allowing for ‘custom locations’ with the fleet tracking software, so users can optimise around their regular fleet routes and customer addresses; greater driving behaviour analysis and route planning.