Despite the memes, t-shirts, political firestorms and late-night monologues, 2020 wasn’t a total wash. For longtime trucking giant Werner Enterprises (CCJ Top 250, No. 11), last year proved to be the right time to roll out its cloud-based propriety mobile fleet management program, Werner EDGE.
The multi-faceted program, which constantly aims to aid man and machine alike, resides in the Microsoft Azure cloud and thrives on the growing inner-connectivity and data pool offered through the Internet of Things (IoT). It’s there that sensor-equipped machines communicate amid ever-improving artificial intelligence, delivering increasingly accurate analyses to help steer fleets to a better bottom line.
Announced in May, Werner EDGE has been helping drivers, carriers and shippers gain a better handle on the complex world of trucking, which got even tougher during the coronavirus pandemic. Electronic bills of ladings and touchless orders – paperless approaches that had been up against plenty of pushback prior to COVID – suddenly were more popular as EDGE stepped up to meet demand.
The egress enabling that greater flow of valuable data is EDGE Connect, Werner’s new telematics device, which is expected to be in the hands of all drivers by the first quarter this year.
In the meantime, Werner Chief Information Officer Daragh Mahon, who joined the company in May to spearhead EDGE’s rollout, is pleased with ROI, which continues to open doors and offer some nice surprises along the way.
“We’ve been really happy with the ROI that we’re seeing,” said Mahon who previously served as senior vice president of global IT and business applications at Vonage before joining Werner, “but some of the ROI is what I call the no-brainer stuff. When you move off of old technology, like for example, what Werner Edge Connect replaced, there’s just no way we could have continued using that old technology. There’s no way we could scale or grow the company to the extent that we want.
“So sometimes the ROI is just a no-brainer – you’ve got to go do it because you need to have that newer technology and those newer platforms in place,” Mahon continued.
