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RAC Telematics has revealed in a report that almost two thirds (65%) of all businesses surveyed currently utilise telematics devices – including black box and smartphone apps – in their vehicles when compared to 38% in 2015. The highest growth in use was seen in business services, at 70%, while retail and construction witnessed take-up at 67% and 66%, respectively.

When segmenting business according to size, use among sole traders has increased from 14% in 2015 to 51% at present. Use among small firms with 50 staff or fewer saw use of telematics rise from 25% in 2015 to 58% in 2016. Finally, use in the corporate sector – 1,000 to 5,000 employees – has risen from 29% to 67%.

According to businesses, the benefits of telematics include lower fuel costs (55%), fewer accidents (43%) and a reduction in maintenance costs (31%) among others. In the future, businesses expect these technologies to provide greater integration with other motoring services, including breakdown and accident management.

RAC Telematics MD Nick Walker holds that adoption among businesses has improved drastically as the benefits more than compensate concerns related to tracking. “One of the very clear factors that we are seeing from the report, and from what we’re hearing from customers, is that telematics is now being associated with cost reduction, cost benefits, more insight and duty of care, than it is about pure tracking and the older benefits of telematics,” said Walker.

“People are looking now for things like vehicle condition monitoring and vehicle diagnostics,” he added. “When vehicles have faults fleet managers want to know so they can anticipate and plan downtime, so vehicle health is a real key part of the future of telematics, and that is really nicely aligned to what we’re doing at the RAC.”

Read more: How telematics is changing the life of car owners today