Cloud-based monetisation provider enables IoT data services in connected cars
Tom Dibble, president & CEO, Aria Systems
Aria Systems, has announced Aria for Connected Vehicles, a cloud-based offering for IoT-enabled connected cars, heavy equipment, on-demand transportation as a service, telematics, and post-sale/lease add-on services.
Aria for Connected Vehicles can be employed by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), third-party device manufacturers, and service providers who need to rapidly create, introduce, test, and scale a wide variety of IoT and digital offerings. Innovative enterprises like Edmunds.com, Subaru, and Zipcar already depend on Aria for increased agility that accelerates their time to revenue, maximises customer lifetime value, and ultimately fuels brand loyalty and retention. To learn more about Aria for Connected Vehicles click here.
With the automotive industry being disrupted by innovators like Uber, Zipcar, and Chariot, manufacturers are shifting their business models from a transactional sales focus to owning long-term recurring customer relationships. To facilitate longer, more predictable revenue streams, they are looking to become closer to their end customer, gain better feedback, and align their offerings with customer choices.
Industry disruption is opening up new opportunities for recurring revenue streams from services inside and outside the vehicle. Yet, legacy business systems can’t enable the go-to-market speed or the agility required to adapt to the evolving end-consumer preferences that new revenue models require.
According to the June 2016 Forrester report by Frank Gillett, The Retrofit Future of the Connected Car, “It’s time for product CTOs and CIOs to explore the tech to support new services.” He added, “Follow the lead of the CMO in targeting specific customer experiences. Now is the time to start mapping and strategising the IoT technologies, software and data integration, analytics, enterprise architecture, and IoT software platforms that you’ll need.” (Gillett, 2016)
Aria for Connected Vehicles manages the monetisation of innovative subscription and usage-based IoT services without compromising enterprise-grade scalability, performance, and security. With Aria, connected vehicle offerings can be constructed into an infinite combination of one-to-one and one-to-many permutations of users, data services, and devices.
Frank-Gillett, VP and principal analyst at Forrester Research
The platform uses Aria’s new Omni-node™ technology, a hierarchical approach to accounts, which ensures that billing precisely reflects what is owed — whether the implementation requires split billing (e.g. employer-pay/employee-pay) or management of a vast collection of assets, such as fleets of IoT-enabled vehicles.
The elegant architecture enables companies to manage individual accounts, accounts with multiple levels of users, service providers, devices, and vehicles. Flexible offers, add-ons, and options can also be pushed quickly to market via all sales channels.
Aria for Connected Vehicles facilitates usage monitoring, monetisation, and billing of on-board diagnostics (ODB) data streams at both the IoT platform and application levels. The Aria platform integrates with technology ecosystems including: smartphone apps, entitlement/provisioning systems, payment processors, as well as existing accounting/GL systems to provide a single view of accounts, activity, invoices, and accounting.
The connected vehicle moves cars, equipment, and machinery from a simple world of isolated tasks to being interactive providers of information for end consumers of value-added digital services that improve productivity, enable innovative practices, and increase safety. The OEM capitalises on these closer relationships through increased revenue from digital services and stronger brand loyalty leading to reuse and repurchase.
Aria for connected vehicles enables:
On-demand Vehicles: Access to cars, equipment, and machinery by the hour — anytime, anywhere, any model. Discounts and loyalty benefits for high-use customers include higher priority and access to better cars. With a smartphone app tying to Aria APIs, Aria holds customer credit card information, protecting it with bank-rate security, thus saving PCI compliance costs.
- Lifestyle access: Subscribe to a pool of cars and swap out car types as needed. At home, subscribe to a fleet of cars in a luxury apartment building, or access a fleet of cars at an office park or campus.
- Road use taxation or UBI: Track mileage on public/private roads. Issue a monthly, quarterly, or yearly bill. Issue refunds based on gas tax paid vs “fair share” road use and type of vehicle.
- Knowledge monetisation: Provide shops and dealerships access to expertise online including rating, diagnostics, management tools, and marketing tools. Added expertise, otherwise too expensive to access, results in higher customer satisfaction and growth.
- Recurring revenue: Move from selling one-off items through retailers to creating value-added recurring services that generate incremental and predictable revenue. Tie electronic services to the item offered to consumers. Leverage usage-based leasing and usage-based insurance.
- Data monetisation: Sell downstream analytics of driver patterns to cities, planners, DOTs, insurers, consumers. Monetise traffic flows, computer heat maps, and driving habits. Leverage access to APIs like the leading mapping/location services do.
“IoT-enabled features have become strategic growth drivers for automobiles, farm machinery, heavy equipment and even automobile insurance companies,” said Tom Dibble, president & CEO, Aria Systems. “Aria for Connected Vehicles helps OEMs, third-party providers and others monetise the tremendous opportunities arriving from the wealth of valuable data streaming from vehicles.”
Comment on this article below or via Twitter @IoTGN