New car tracking solutions put clients in the driver’s seat

Track IT was accused of fraudulently taking money from the public without fixing tracking devices on their cars.

“The old system of tracing cars is falling out of favour as customers find it hard to trust that their vehicles can be tracked effectively around the clock,” said Purity Tanui of Patriotic Guards which now has only a few clients under its old system.

Vehicle tracking companies have turned to technologies that allow clients to track their vehicles at their own pleasure.

These include fleet management and car tracing and recovery systems through which clients are able to track the geographical position of their vehicles, their fuel consumption, routes travelled, and an array of other statistics depending on the package one signs up for.

The services, powered by mobile GSM technology and are online-based.

The client is assigned a user name and password and can log on from any location to track the location of their vehicles.

Alternatively, tracking software can be installed on specific clients’ computers to achieve the same purpose.

Some players, however, are using both the old system that uses radio frequencies (VHF) and GSM technology to serve their clients.

A CarTrack employee told Business Daily that the company’s clients who own private cars prefer the VHF service because it is dormant and is only activated by the service provider upon request.

Though this model resembles the one used by Track IT, the CarTrack employee said that the company’s long-lasting relationships with its clients enabled them trust in the system.

The Track IT exposé raised the level of distrust and fear among subscribers of car tracking systems.

According to analysts, the new offerings have helped to maintain confidence in the sector.

“The industry has continued to grow; a lot of people who were hooked to the Track IT service simply moved over to other companies,” said Phillip Chunju, head of technical operations at Auto Track.

“The exposé served to make them more inquisitive about the nature of the tracking business and the fact that they can constantly test the system has restored their confidence.”

Growing demand from commercial transport companies’ seeking to cut costs by closely monitoring their fleets has helped increase the uptake of fleet management systems in the local market.

Companies offering fleet management services also fuel consumption monitoring services, providing daily or monthly reports of the amount of fuel consumed by their vehicles.

Transport companies typically incur heavy fuel bills on account of fuel siphoned by the drivers of their commercial vehicles.

“Transportation of high value goods has also made it urgent to subscribe to fleet management services to increase security of the goods,” Joseph Karumbi, general manger of RiverCross Tracking Limited said, adding that “Importers of goods like it when they can be informed of the movements of their goods from point to point in real time.”

Vehicle trackers currently charge between Sh30, 000 to 40, 000 for initial installation and about Sh1,500 per month for maintaining the service.

The increase in car jacking in the recent months has added an impetus to motorists to subscribe to car tracking and recovery services.

Several solutions have arrived to serve this market, including some that are purely mobile-based and which enable motorists to immobilise car engines using their mobile phones.

But the move from offering simple tracking solutions to providing sophisticated tools, for example engine immobilisation using mobile phones, may not be effective in carjacking scenarios, analysts say.

“With the ability to track, a stolen car can easily be located and the nearest police station can be informed, which increases chances of recovery. In most carjacking incidents, mobile phones are the first items to be confiscated, leaving the owner with little chance of recovering the vehicle if there is no tracking service to backup engine immobilisation,” said Mr Chunju.

Analysts say that carjackers need only a few hours to rip off a car.

Recovery within the first one hour is important, hence the preference for systems that are not dependent on a single machine like a specific computer or a mobile.

The online platform, with its ubiquity, is offering a more robust tracking method than other systems.

“The market of the service where clients relied on service providers for tracking is dwindling,” said Joseph Karumbi, general manger of RiverCross Tracking Limited.

ICT revolution in the country is offering new solutions to consumers and businesses alike, in effect expanding business opportunities in asset management among other web-enabled businesses. Kenyan tracking firms are currently serving over 30,000 commercial and private cars.