With reference to an article we published recently on the possible redundancy of drivers in the advent of self-driving vehicles, we deal today with a related issue: will the use of vehicle tracking applications or software replace human involvement in commercial transportation all together?
When we talk to prospective and established customers, there are quite a lot of common questions that crop up regarding our products. There are not only technical inquiries into the use of reports and so on, some of the queries are to do with very human anxieties: apart from the famous 'Big Brother stigma' we frequently have to address, many concerns come from employees and HR departments, and are not what you might normally expect. With the global trend of technologicalization in so many working sectors nowadays, people often ask us: “Will I lose my job?”, “Will there eventually be a machine able to do the work that I currently do?”.
As we have recently said, the innovation of self-driving vehicles might actually introduce significant changes in fleets in the longer term, such as the loss of the thrill of driving which will impact on all car enthusiasts—will the vehicles of today still be around in the future merely for ‘entertainment’ purposes? Self-driving vehicles will probably never actually completely replace human drivers; there will probably be some kind of compromise. We will most likely have to use vehicles differently in a way that helps us to optimise time and work safely.
The million dollar question for some people, as we have already said, is “Will vehicle tracking applications take my place at work?”. We’d like to answer this with a term that is becoming more and more prevalent lately—‘humanification’. Digital disruption is an incredibly important subject for companies and, while some of them think innovation is socially disruptive and impacts on personal life, jobs or business, the correct approach is actually to align with this thriving force and transform digital disruption into a competitive advantage. Seize upon the right moment to harness the power of technology and use it to develop your business.
Humans still take centre stage; they are at the heart of business processes and utilise technology as a valuable tool to liberate themselves from lower value activities or tasks. This attitude is balancing humans and technology and giving back importance to creativity, empathy, problem solving and entrepreneurship—all the more possible with the help of technologically advanced tools. The concept is examined in the book Humanification by Christian Kromme, with the evocative subtitle: 'Go Digital, Stay Human'.
Humanification is helping people unlock innovation—technology really has the power to gather humanity into one big organism. It’s a fresh insight into how technology should be seen, as the provider of metrics and algorithms behind important decisions. This corresponds in exactly the same way with how fleet tracking technology can be implemented into your operation.
