This article was originally published on Fleet Auto News.
Source: https://fleetautonews.com.au/fleet-data-is-escaping-the-fleet-department/
Fleet telematics has traditionally been the domain of Fleet Managers, but Dan Winson, Founder and CEO of Zetifi, believes that is about to change.
Speaking at the AfMA Summit, Winson demonstrated how connected vehicle data can be integrated directly into Microsoft applications, giving finance, HR and safety teams access to information that has historically been locked inside specialist fleet management platforms.
His message was simple: the future isn’t about replacing existing telematics systems, it’s about making fleet data useful across the entire organisation.
“I’m going to tell you about how I can turn you all into superheroes,” Winson told delegates. “Not because we’re going to help you manage your fleets better, but because we’re going to empower the people around you.”
Fleet Data Shouldn’t Live in One Department
Modern telematics platforms collect enormous amounts of valuable information, but Winson argues that most of it remains isolated within fleet operations.
“We take those APIs, we pull that information, we put it into Microsoft,” he explained.
By integrating telematics data into Microsoft SharePoint, Teams, Power Automate and Copilot, organisations can trigger workflows and provide information to departments that need it without requiring specialist fleet software.
“Once it’s in SharePoint, it unlocks so many options for you to do more with it,” Winson said. “In the case of this room, it enables your peers, it enables the finance team, it enables the HR team and it enables the safety team to do a lot with it.”
The Best Fleet Platform Isn’t Always the Best Business Platform
Winson was careful to point out that this isn’t about replacing established telematics providers.
Using Geotab as an example, he praised dedicated fleet management systems while highlighting their limitations for non-fleet users.
“Geotab is perfect for managing your fleet,” he said. “But it doesn’t have the context that you’ve got inside Microsoft.”
Fleet platforms understand vehicles and drivers, but Microsoft already understands an organisation’s structure, policies and documents.
“It doesn’t have the awareness of who reports to who, who’s on holidays, doesn’t know all of your policies, at least not in the detail that SharePoint does.”
Rather than recreating fleet software, Zetifi simply connects the two environments.
“We don’t want to recreate it by any stretch. That would be a terrible idea.”
From Alerts to Automated Workflows
The integration allows organisations to move beyond dashboards and create automated business processes.
“We take information from alerts, we take it from web hooks, we take it from polling information,” Winson explained. “We take key information, putting it in Microsoft, so you’ve got safety events, operator events and some of your pre-vehicle check information all wrapped up neatly in a very lightweight console.”
Once inside Microsoft, Power Automate can send emails, generate Teams messages, update SharePoint records or trigger custom workflows without manual intervention.
“What you’re going to see is Power Automate. Power Automate is Microsoft’s tool for clicks, not code workflow development.”
That means organisations can build sophisticated workflows without relying on software developers.
“You can plug in data from just about anywhere, including from your telematics platform, and then you can drive whatever workflows you need.”
AI Adds the Missing Context
Winson believes the real opportunity emerges when fleet data is combined with AI.
Using Microsoft Copilot, organisations can automatically analyse service histories, maintenance invoices, inspection reports and policies alongside telematics information.
“You can have all your fleet maintenance records stored in SharePoint in PDFs or Excel files, and that agent can read all of that, it can interpret it, and then it can present it back to you via Teams.”
In one example, a pre-vehicle inspection identifies a defect in Geotab before automatically generating a Teams notification.
The AI agent can then retrieve relevant service invoices, maintenance records and supporting documentation to give staff immediate context without searching through multiple systems.
“It gives you the same things that would have otherwise taken you half an hour to go off and find.”
Putting Fleet Managers at the Centre of Digital Transformation
Perhaps the biggest shift is cultural rather than technical. Instead of being the sole users of telematics platforms, fleet managers become the people enabling better decision making across the business.
“If you run Microsoft in your organisation, and you run the fleet,” Winson said, “we would like to talk to you. We don’t want to necessarily sell you your telematics. We’re very happy to work with your existing telematics provider.”
For Winson, the future belongs to organisations that connect existing technologies rather than replacing them.
By bringing fleet data into the same ecosystem as finance, HR, safety and corporate documents, connected vehicles become connected businesses—allowing every department to make faster, better-informed decisions using information that was previously available only to fleet specialists.
