The 6th Telematics Conference SE Europe was held at the end of September in Budapest, Hungary. The main topic of this year’s edition of the unique telematics focused conference and exhibition in the Southeast Europe region, was on telematics and Internet of Things (IoT).
Keynote
The first to speak was Phat Huynh, managing director at Telekom Austria Group M2M, who discussed how to overcome the barriers companies face in IoT projects. “Our experience from over 400 M2M projects in 5 years’ time has given us 3 important take-aways: Be open by default, standards drive adoption, culture always beats strategy,” said Huynh.
Trends and opportunities in communications and connectivity possibilities
The growing number of vehicles, along with increased urbanisation, is worsening congestion, at great cost to society. Jan Cools, CEO at Be-Mobile, believes that “electronic toll collection (ETC) is the best driver for mass market vehicle telematics and will move from stand-alone to integrated solutions.”
Marek Pukel, senior international sales manager at Ruptela, discussed the benefits and practical uses of IoT in fleet management. “Its value is in simplified installation, no additional gadget purchases, limited access for the driver, and warranty terms protection,” said Pukel.
The session was followed by a panel discussion with guests Phat Huynh from Telekom Austria Group M2M, Gergely Matrai, product manager at Opel Southeast Europe, and Barnabas Palfy, OnStar Support Specialist at Opel Southeast Europe.
The panel moderator Volha Smirnova, chief marketing officer at Gurtam, commented: “Connectivity nowadays provides essential infrastructure for organisations to transform asset information into data-driven applications. While many industries are warming up to get into the niche, the real demand can only be managed through global collaborations of different players, with the SEEurope conference now becoming a great platform to achieve all that!”
Adoption of new business models and their revenue generation
Zoltan Varga, CEO at Toll Service, presented their innovative free-flow tolling system HU-GO. Varga explained: “It is a cost effective and standout ITS solution and it is very flexible in terms of servicing other needs such as road safety, traffic, transportation, and violation management, vehicle control, and crime and tax fraud prevention.”
Bartlomiej Mackiewicz, business development manager at Transics International, compared GPS systems and fleet management systems (FMS). “Though initial costs are lower with GPS than with FMS, the return-on-investment is greater with the latter.”
Importance of industry collaborations
Tiago Borges, co-founder and general manager at Inosat Global, elaborated on the coopetition strategy that in the telematics industry on the case of 1-Fleet Alliance: “The real benefits of our coopetition strategy are: new revenue streams, research and development sharing, group purchases, and ecosystem development. Overall, quick wins plus long-term value creation.”
Promising opportunities for commercial telematics and IoT
The conference in Budapest concluded with a panel discussion on what comes next in the region and globally, beyond IoT and telematics. It was moderated by Paul Lauria, president at Mercury Associates.
Guests included Aliaksandr Kuushnyau, head of Wialon Division at Gurtam, and Tiago Borges from Inosat Global. “Southeast Europe today is a land of opportunity for telematics. Although there are already some important local players, the market is still ‘green land’ and growth prospects are enormous,” said Borges.
See you next year!
The official part of the conference closed with an invitation to the 7th edition of the event, which will be held in Bratislava, Slovakia, on 28 September 2017. The attendees were also invited to join the 3rd international Telematics Conference Middle East & Africa, which will be held on March 8–9, 2017 in Dubai, UAE.
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