Solving Real Automotive Industry Challenges

Fleetware has long been recognised for its expertise in commercial telematics and GPS tracking solutions. For years, the company has helped businesses gain greater visibility and control over their fleet operations.

More recently, Fleetware has expanded its offering with new solutions designed to solve very specific operational challenges within the automotive sector.

In a recent conversation, Fleetware General Manager Matt Cusworth spoke with Business Development Manager Brendan Fowler about two of these innovations: TrueSpot, a real-time asset location solution for dealerships, and Fleetware’s toll tracking platform designed to eliminate hidden toll costs for loan vehicles.

Together, these solutions address issues that dealerships across Australia face every day.

TrueSpot: Real-Time Visibility Across Dealership Sites

TrueSpot represents a shift from traditional telematics tracking. Rather than monitoring vehicles on the road, the solution focuses on real-time location tracking within a fixed environment, such as a car dealership.

Large dealership sites often manage hundreds of vehicles and keys across multiple areas, including service departments, sales yards, reconditioning areas and wash bays. Finding a specific vehicle or set of keys can quickly become time-consuming.

As Brendan Fowler explains:

“TrueSpot is designed to create a local positioning network across a dealership site. Staff simply open the app, search for the vehicle or key they need, and the system pinpoints exactly where it is.”

Using the mobile application, employees can quickly identify whether a vehicle is in the service department, parked in the sales yard, sitting in the recon area, or waiting in the wash bay. Even misplaced keys can be located instantly.

By removing the need for staff to spend valuable time searching for vehicles and keys, dealerships can improve productivity and ensure employees focus on more valuable tasks.

Why Vehicle Visibility Matters for Customer Experience

While operational efficiency is a major benefit, TrueSpot also plays an important role in improving the customer experience.

Fowler shared a real-world example from his own car-buying experience that highlights the problem.

After finding a vehicle advertised online, he visited the dealership to inspect it. Staff left to locate the car, but after 20 minutes returned unable to find it.

“I was pretty stunned that it could actually happen, but they simply couldn’t locate the car. I ended up leaving and coming back the following week.”

While Fowler eventually purchased the vehicle, he acknowledges that many customers would simply walk away and buy elsewhere.

Situations like this can damage a dealership’s reputation and create a frustrating experience for customers. By ensuring staff always know exactly where vehicles and keys are located, TrueSpot helps remove unnecessary delays and supports a smoother sales process.

Reducing Lost Keys and Operational Costs

Beyond time savings and improved service, dealerships can also see significant cost reductions. In fact, Fleetware has heard from dealerships spending more than $100,000 a year replacing lost keys. Lost keys remain a common issue within the industry, particularly on large dealership sites with high vehicle turnover.

TrueSpot helps reduce these costs by ensuring keys can always be located quickly and by supporting better compliance practices, such as confirming keys are returned to secure storage at the end of each day.

Solving Another Dealership Challenge: Toll Charges on Loan Vehicles

Alongside TrueSpot, Fleetware has introduced another solution designed specifically for the automotive sector, this time addressing toll charges on dealership loan vehicles.

Many dealerships provide customers with loan cars while their own vehicles are being serviced or repaired. These vehicles often travel through toll roads in cities such as Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

However, toll charges are typically received weeks after the vehicle has been returned.

This delay creates a major administrative challenge, as businesses must then determine which customer incurred the charges. Some dealerships have reported absorbing more than $60,000 a year in toll charges because the process is too manual and time-consuming to recover the costs accurately. In many cases, the effort required to track them down outweighs the cost itself.

Automating Toll Tracking for Loan Vehicles

Fleetware’s toll tracking solution eliminates this problem by combining vehicle tracking with toll processing technology.

By installing a tracking device in loan vehicles and integrating it with a toll platform, dealerships can see toll charges immediately when the vehicle is returned.

Instead of waiting weeks for invoices to arrive, businesses can instantly identify any tolls incurred during the loan period and attribute them to the correct customer before the vehicle leaves the site.

The result is a simpler process, improved transparency, and the elimination of unnecessary costs for dealerships.

Practical Solutions Built Around Customer Challenges

Both TrueSpot and Fleetware’s toll tracking solution reflect the company’s consultative approach to working with customers.

Rather than developing technology in isolation, Fleetware focuses on understanding the operational challenges businesses face and designing solutions that solve real problems.

As dealerships continue to manage growing vehicle inventories, complex customer journeys and rising operational costs, solutions like these provide practical ways to improve efficiency and protect profitability.

With TrueSpot and its toll tracking platform, Fleetware is continuing to expand beyond traditional telematics and deliver new tools that help automotive businesses operate smarter. Get in contact with our friendly team to find out more today.