Q. How do you see the market for fuel card services evolving over the coming years in terms of partner programs?
A. I think you see most oil companies focus on what they’re good at...
A. Right now, they can’t. That’s why you don’t see this application in the market – and probably won’t for a while. Within a decade you might see some sort of real-world application, but it’s still early. The future of the connected car, and how it shakes out in the world of fleet, rests on two big dependencies. One is the ability of connected car players to make meaningful business partnerships. That’s easier said than done. Especially where you have an emerging technology that everyone wants to own, division of intellectual property is but one barrier to bringing multiple vendors together to find a workable solution. Throw government regulations into the mix and it’s anyone’s guess as to when we will see this technology in real time. The other dependency is simply the issue of data security. Companies without a pedigree guaranteeing the sanctity of customer data may find trust is a serious barrier to entering the autonomous vehicle market. At WEX, partnerships and data security have been intrinsic to our tech development since 1983. We couldn’t develop, own and operate a closed-loop network – accepted at more than 95% of all U.S. fuel and maintenance locations -- if we didn’t have the cooperation of multiple players along the way: individual service stations, Big Oil, plastic vendors, Point-of-Sale developers and many more. And we wouldn’t have been able to win the trust of hundreds of thousands of customers through the years unless we had a solid reputation for responsible data capture, thorough analysis and reporting, and helpful customer service in a pinch. So, while it’s early, WEX fully expects to be a player in the connected car space. We think about it this way: WEX Fleet Card transactions are already secure on plastic. Let’s just remove the plastic and turn the car into the card. We’re working on it.
Senior Vice President and General Manager
A. I think you see most oil companies focus on what they’re good at...
A. I think you will get both. It’s going to take a lot of time to change to just one solution...
A. I think down the road everybody probably assumes that we end up in a cardless society...
A. No, not necessarily. It may be more of a partnership opportunity as they start to get more involved in other aspects of the business...
A. Vehicles will always need to be fueled...
A. In these regions, a lot of what we do is following our customers. We are fortunate enough to have a database of more than 300,000 customers...
A. We’re getting it more from the customers. If I manage a fleet and I have a presence in 15 different countries, I have a global fleet manager that oversees it all...
A. Obviously, a partner will have more presence than an individual customer. A fleet is just one entity, whereas a fleet management partner might have 20 or 30 accounts in a given region...
A. We’re starting to see a lot of points of integration, whether that be with data or systems. Telematics devices provide a rich data set that can be utilized in a number of ways...
A. Fleet management was historically built on the foundation of data. The more data you had, and the more you could combine various data sources, the easier it was to gain insight into how your fleet is operating, allowing you to make better decisions...
A. The pace of change today is faster than it’s ever been, and yet slower than it ever will be from this point forward...
A. The single biggest mistake we see is to view parts of your fleet operation independent of each other...
A. There are many things, beyond the obvious, such as developing a written preparedness plan and training your employees to implement it so you protect your vehicles and equipment and identify which employees play essential roles during a disaster...
A. Arriving at work, Fran Fleetkeeper scans a large board with dots on a map. Some of the dots are green. Some are red...
A. Imagine waking up one day to no fuel, damaged roads, and unknown damage to your fleet of 500 vehicles. It’s the ultimate nightmare for a business with any exposure at all to mobility...
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