Editor's note: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints uses Motorq to consolidate connected-vehicle data across multiple automakers.

Mechanics don’t use the same tool for every job. Mark Dibb doesn't use the same telematics program for every driver, either. As global fleet planning & acquisition manager at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he helps oversee roughly 20,000 vehicles across its global operations.

One side of the fleet consists of missionary vehicles, which are driven by 18- to 22-year-olds, many of whom are new drivers. The other is employee vehicles driven by facilities managers, education coordinators, and operational staff. These populations don't create the same fleet management problem, so the Church built two programs.

The Missionary Fleet: Where Safety Came First

For the missionary fleet in the United States, the Church uses windshield-mounted cameras with active in-cab coaching. The business case was straightforward.

"These are 18- to 22-year-olds, out on their own, many of them behind the wheel regularly for the first time in their lives,” said Dibb. “For a population with that little driving experience, we knew we needed to be proactive.”

The real-time feedback model produced substantial reductions in speeding and aggressive driving violations over time and, by the Church’s account, has helped to reduce accidents and save lives. For a young driver population with limited experience behind the wheel, the investment justified the additional hardware, installation, and ongoing program management requirements.

The Employee Fleet: Where Operational Visibility Mattered More

The United States Church’s employee-driven fleet presented a different challenge. The Church believed this population presented a relatively low safety risk since previous incidents were mostly low-speed turning or backing events — the kind that cameras and coaching programs weren’t likely to meaningfully reduce. Installing the same hardware and paying for the same program made neither operational nor financial sense.

But low risk didn't mean no need. The Church still needed visibility into the assets: odometer readings, utilization, location, maintenance indicators. These inputs drive lifecycle decisions, replacement timing, and day-to-day asset management. The question was how to get them at a lower cost and with a lower administrative burden than a full driver-coaching deployment required.

The Operational Challenges of Aftermarket Telematics

The Church's operating structure made the existing telematics solutions harder to justify for its employee fleet. Vehicles are distributed across many locations and cycled regularly. Devices would need to be installed, removed, transferred, and supported as vehicles move in and out of service, without the local support of a Church Vehicle Coordinator, as the missionary fleet has.

"Each new telematics device means another asset to manage," Dibb said.

That additional asset-management burden mattered to a fleet trying to limit administrative complexity. Device failures and reassignment would require troubleshooting and extra coordination.

Why OEM-Embedded Connectivity Fit Better

For the employee fleet, The Church instead focused on OEM-embedded connectivity already built into the vehicle. Since the connectivity ships with the vehicle, the fleet could access operational intelligence without managing additional physical devices.

Cost also factored into the decision. Without additional hardware procurement and installation, Dibb could reduce up-front costs by 100% and monthly service costs by 50% as compared to the existing in-cab coaching program. Across thousands of assets, the cost difference was material.

For mixed fleets, OEM data carries a practical complication: each manufacturer operates its own portal and data environment. Dibb wanted the fleet team to work from a single interface rather than managing multiple OEM systems.

"I don't want to subscribe to six different platforms," he said.

The fleet ultimately consolidated vehicle data across manufacturers into a centralized operational view that could scale across the organization.

What OEM Data Changed in Practice

Some of the first applications showed up in vehicle lifecycle management. When the Church cycles employee vehicles, drivers pick up replacements and are expected to notify the fleet team when the outgoing vehicle is ready for remarketing. That notification step wasn't always happening.

"Every week that goes by, we're losing residual values," Dibb said.

Dibb set up alerts for vehicles that had not recorded an ignition cycle in ten days. Each week, the system now surfaces one or two vehicles that were still sitting after drivers had already received their replacement vehicles.

Utilization data produced similar results. Dibb identified vehicles not being used at the rate their assignments assumed. After reviewing the data, some employees turned in vehicles they could no longer justify keeping. In one case, the Church reassigned a vehicle across states.

Maintenance visibility produced operationally meaningful issues. Dibb saw a tire pressure alert for a passenger SUV showing one tire at roughly 58 PSI, well above the 32 PSI spec. After reaching out, the driver explained that the tire had looked low, so he filled it without wearing his glasses and didn't realize how much air he had added. The alert surfaced a safety condition that would have gone unnoticed.

The program also supported a theft recovery. A stolen Church vehicle was located in the back corner of a storage unit facility through GPS data from built-in OEM connectivity. In partnership with local law enforcement, it was recovered within about 48 hours with only the tailgate missing.

Dibb noted a practical advantage embedded connectivity offers in these situations. With aftermarket hardware, there's no hiding the device. In incidents with the missionary fleet, thieves found the windshield-mounted units immediately.

“The first thing that those thieves do when they get in the car and all of a sudden it starts talking to them to slow down or put their seatbelt on, they rip it out and throw it out the window,” Dibb said.

With OEM connectivity, there's nothing for a thief to find. The tracking is in the vehicle, not obviously visible.

Safety as the Unexpected Output

The employee-fleet program was primarily built around fleet management rather than driver safety. Then the data came in.

Once the system was live, Dibb's team began seeing a significant volume of speeding events, aggressive driving alerts, and seat belt exceptions. The data showed some drivers traveling at excessive highway speeds for extended periods.

After the fleet team began sending weekly warning emails to drivers, behavior changed quickly. Early weekly reviews identified dozens of speeding warnings. Within a few months, those weekly totals had dropped into the low single digits, with some weeks recording just one or two warnings.

The employee fleet program showed that safety event visibility alone can meaningfully influence driver behavior in some fleet populations, even without deploying a more intensive camera-based program.

Where AI Fits Into Fleet Workflows

As connected vehicle programs mature, fleets are managing larger volumes of operational data across manufacturers, systems, and workflows.

For Dibb, part of the appeal of centralized vehicle data lies in its ability to reduce the manual effort required to answer operational questions.

“I just kind of treat it like an assistant sometimes,” Dibb said. “Hey, I need this created or I need this report pulled.”

Dibb described several situations where AI-assisted workflows could simplify day-to-day fleet operations. One example involved identifying Toyota Tacoma vehicles located near Salt Lake City that could potentially be reassigned earlier than planned. Historically, that process required manually reviewing vehicle reports, coordinates, and map locations individually.

He also pointed to scenarios in which fleet managers could ask direct operational questions, such as identifying vehicle behavior during a specific event, without manually sifting through multiple reports and underlying datasets.

For fleets consolidating connected vehicle data across OEMs, AI tools are increasingly being evaluated as a way to surface patterns faster, reduce repetitive analysis work, and help fleet teams respond earlier to operational issues. The combination of connected vehicle data, AI-assisted analysis, and fleet manager expertise may shape how many organizations approach fleet operations over the next several years.

The Framework for Other Fleets

The Church's two-track approach isn't complicated. Different driver populations have distinct risk profiles, operating models, and cost structures. The telematics program should reflect those differences.

A young, inexperienced driver population with high exposure to incidents justifies active coaching and real-time intervention. The ROI case is built on risk reduction.

An experienced, low-risk employee population may need something different — like operational visibility, lifecycle data, and utilization monitoring — at a lower cost and with a lower administrative burden. The ROI case is built on asset efficiency and process discipline.

Hardware costs extend beyond device price. Installation, removal, transfer, and replacement across a cycling fleet add up. For fleets evaluating OEM-embedded connectivity, the right comparison isn't hardware cost versus subscription cost. It's total program cost, including the administrative load that hardware creates, against the operational value the program produces.

For Dibb, the result is two programs matched to two populations, each with its own ROI framework. That's not a workaround. That's fleet management that fits the actual operating environment.