Trucking Risk and Insurance Podcast

Unlocking the Power of Data: Building Positive Relationships for Empowered Decision-Making

July 18, 2023 John Farquhar & Chris Harris Season 2 Episode 64
Trucking Risk and Insurance Podcast
Unlocking the Power of Data: Building Positive Relationships for Empowered Decision-Making
Show Notes Transcript

Welcome to SpeedGuage! This video explores the fascinating world of data and its impact on our daily lives. Join us as we delve into the concept of data production and consumption, highlighting how every individual plays a role in generating and receiving vast amounts of data. We discuss the importance of fostering a positive relationship with data and how it can enhance our endeavours. Drawing inspiration from Karen Levy's book, "Data-Driven," we examine drivers' negative perceptions of data in the trucking industry. Discover how embracing data as an integral part of our lives can lead to fruitful discussions and improved outcomes. We introduce SpeedGuage's groundbreaking tool, the First Score, designed to empower drivers, fleet owners, and insurance industry professionals to make informed decisions and effectively manage risk. Get ready to unlock the true potential of data and create positive relationships that drive success. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button to stay updated with our latest content!

Get in touch with Gui Orliac of SpeedGuage
guiorliac@speedgauge.net
website: www.theddn.com

Your Hosts:
John Farquhar
Summit Risk Solutions: summitrisksolutions.ca
1 226 802-2762
John@summitrisksolutions.ca


Chris Harris
Safety Dawg Inc: safetydawg.com
Chris@SafetyDawg.com
1 905 973 7056


Keeping it Safety Dawg Simple!
#trucksafety #truckinsurance #truckpodcast

Do you need a "Truck Driver Safety Policy?" Get it today! https://safetydawg.com/policy

Attention, Ontario Trucking Companies. If you are relying on facility insurance, you could be overpaying. Reduce your insurance cost by 10, 000 or more per truck. And good news, we accept drivers with only 1 year of experience. To learn more, just send us text by typing insurance to 365 364 0714.

Gui Orilac, SpeedGuage:

need to build a positive relationship, uh, for everybody using the data. If we create a positive relationship, then, um, you know, we are, everybody is going to be starting to using it to better what they are doing.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg:

Guy from Speed Gauge. And he's talking on this week's show about how you can use data in a positive, effective, influential way with your drivers, your boss, your managers, your insurance company. Join us this week on the Trucking Risk and Insurance Podcast.

John Farquhar, Summit Risk Solutions:

Hey, Gui. Thanks for joining us. Let's talk about all things telematic today.

Gui Orilac, SpeedGuage:

Hi, John. And, uh, hi, Chris. Thank you very much for having, uh, uh, your local, uh, Frenchman on, uh, on board. Yeah.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg:

Let's be clear. When you say Frenchman, I mistakenly thought maybe you came from Quebec, but no, you said you didn't come from Quebec. You came from?

Gui Orilac, SpeedGuage:

I came from Paris. Uh, and, uh, so if, uh, and I always, uh, thought that after, you know, over 20 years in the U. S. I will not have an accent, but clearly this is not the case. I hope listeners and are going to indulge it, indulge me. Um, with, and I'm going to try to, uh, and relate to, to me, because it's, it's not, uh, that simple. I, I always think I, I speak English perfectly, but it's still, uh, it is still not perfect. No. Okay. Yep. Gui

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg:

I su strongly suspect the majority of our listening audience and viewers. Are also immigrants. So I believe they will be sympathetic and cut us some slack.

Gui Orilac, SpeedGuage:

Okay. Thank you very

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg:

much . So telematics, tell us who you are working

Gui Orilac, SpeedGuage:

with. So yeah, thank you very much. So I'm, uh, my name is Gui and I work with uh, speed Gauge. And Speed Gauge is one of the largest, uh, platform aggregator of telematics data in North America and maybe possibly in the world. I think we cover 92% of. All telematic data in North America, and we do work both in Europe and other parts of the world as well. And SpeedGauge is in the phase of transition of going beyond looking at just speeding data and building what we call the Driven Data Network. Where, uh, we are creating a platform to, for all the, um, players within the, uh, transportation industry, uh, to come and, uh, exchange data.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg:

Sorry, you're building a platform where we can come in and look at the data, but what are you

Gui Orilac, SpeedGuage:

going to be showing us? And they change the data because one of the difficulty is you want people to be transparent in the exchange of the data, and you want to also to be based on permission. I mean, one of the hard part is to make sure that all the people involved in the data usage. Is authorized to do that the right way. I think that, you know, if we want to have a success in thinking and in using data across our industry, we need to make sure that is as transparent and as easy as possible. And that's what speed gauge and the driven data network are building is a way for the whole people within the industry to come at one location to have access to data. And to use that data in a way that is easy and understandable. Um, so that's what the, some of the action and the work we are doing, uh, within SpeedGauge and within the Driven Data Network. Well,

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg:

so when I... I mean, I only have very limited experience with Speed Gauge. Um, I was working temporarily as a safety director for a trucking company and their telematics, their ELD provider, um, had Speed Gauge. So, I've got some experience with Speed Gauge in the reports and I loved the report, by the way, because it would tell me how many speeding events, and the thing that I liked about it was... It knew this, but the speed limit on all the roads, not just the highway, it knew it on, uh, all of the roads. And so I knew when a truck was speeding. Which I found very interesting.

Gui Orilac, SpeedGuage:

So I think, so you're making a lot of very good points. So what the SpeedGauge does and what the Driven Data Network Foundation is, is to normalize the data from over a hundred telematic providers. In North America and around the world. And what does that mean? Is that means that if you are, you know, if you guys don't mind, I, I may, I, I will use names. Mm-hmm.. But if you are using, uh, Samsara or if you're using Trimble, or if you are using Geotab, you are, uh, on different platform, all those different platform measure and, uh, provide data in a very different way. And so what SpeedGauge does is take that data, not just aggregate the data so that You can come to one location to get it, but also normalize it so that, you know, what Samsara's data and what Geotab's data and what Trimble's data is, looks the same. So you can do comparison of likes for likes. And that's really what the foundation of SpeedGauge started. Now. When we take that to a higher level is that we realize that it can be applied in many different functions, not just for safety. It can be applied in many other areas of the transportation industry. And so that's why we are evolving as a company from um, being a focus on safety to be a little bit broader than that. And we are talking about risk management, financial information and things like that.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg:

I was gonna say, give us an example of what do you mean by being able to use it

Gui Orilac, SpeedGuage:

broader? Yeah. So for example, or current, uh, you know, uh, use case that so if you are a company and you work with 100 fleet And you need to access the data from 100 fleets. Well, how do you do that? And how do you do that if, you know, you have 100 fleets that have 15 different ELDs and telematic providers? That starts to be really interesting. So then, what you have, you have certain companies that have, you know, IT departments that can ingest data from the top three or four telematic providers. Well, but... You still have 15 authors or 12 authors to, uh, to ingest data from. And so that's what SpeedGauge does. But even if you ingest the data, you need to normalize it so that you compare likes for likes. So you could ingest the data from the top three telematic providers and then come to another provider to ingest 12 more sources of data. At the same time, they are not normalized as they may not look at all the same. So what SpeedGauge has done and what the Driven Data Network is working on is to take that data and to make it normalized across the industry. One of the biggest applications that we have started to do is to use and offer the data that we have for the, for risk management and the insurance industry. And, uh, we think that and from what we are getting at is that there's a lot of interest from the risk management and insurance industry to better understand what's happening on the road and that's what we are able to do because in a normalized way, so they come to the Driven Data Network and they access the data and they can look at it and know that it's very, uh, comparable from one fleet to another, even if they are different ELDs or telematic providers.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg:

And a mutual friend of ours, uh, Mr. Workington from Fleet Metrica. Um, he paid for a study, and I'll screw this all up and Ward will yell at me later. That's okay,

Gui Orilac, SpeedGuage:

that's okay. We will talk to Ward.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg:

But one of the things that, if I can remember, uh, the study showing, when negative change starts to happen, such as an increase in speeding, For an individual driver, that exponentially greatly increases the risk of a crash for that driver.

Gui Orilac, SpeedGuage:

Yeah. And I think one, uh, so, so, uh, SpeedGage, so let me take you back a little bit back and then come back to your question. SpeedGage started like 14 years ago as a company to provide enhancement to the telematic industry. So that's how we, we started. So that's why we have developed a lot of connection. With the telematic industry, and that's why also we have spent a lot of time working with, uh, transportation company and fleet from, you know, local delivery to, you know, class seven and class eight. So we have a broad range of access to data. And, uh, speeding in general, even today, is linked to, I think, uh, 70% or 60 to 70% is a cause for accidents. So some people will argue it could be lane departure. Some people will argue, you know, you get more insight coming from other, uh, sources. But understanding Uh, what's happening on the road and how it's linked to speeding and how to change behavior. I think what's more important than just speeding is to understand and recognize change in behavior patterns during, uh, during the run. And that's what I think, uh, Ward, I, I, I spoken with him about that. So, and that's a type of information we work on is try to understand what are the change and surface those changes across maybe different fleets or even within a fleet. You know, who are the driver and why is there a change? Uh, in pattern within a driver versus another one. One example that we worked was, I think, based in Canada and there was a, you know, a problem with a driver and, uh, you know, for a long time she was a perfect driver. And then within couple of months, uh, you know, there was a per, uh, she started to show that, you know, she was speeding. There was a lot of different issues in her deliveries in her route. And what happened is that, Dispatch sends, uh, change the route without talking to the driver, creating some stress to the driver. Once that was identified, then we facilitated the conversation with dispatch. And within a couple of weeks, that driver that was an excellent driver, that has problem became back an excellent driver. So my take is that when we think about data, when we think about The relationship that we have with, uh, you know, technology, with the different people within the industry, we need to spend a lot of time making sure we communicate to one another using good data and speed gauge accuracy in terms of data is in the order of 99. 5 or 99. 7%.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg:

Sorry, Johnny, you got your head

John Farquhar, Summit Risk Solutions:

bobbed. I'm just going to say one of the things that we need to realize, and unfortunately, I see this too often, is when you get people that are analyzing the data, they're not analyzing it properly, they're not analyzing it thoroughly, and they're very quick to blame the driver. So, in this example here, the true root cause of the situation was not the driver. It was an effect upon the driver by a routing change, you know, that management or operations had done and they didn't realize how this would affect the driver at the time. So this, this really helps you to, to look deeper and find out what's causing that behavioral issue. Uh, especially when you go from being really good to, Oh my God, things have gone south and then we can get back to being good again. You know, it really helps make sure everybody's in communication.

Gui Orilac, SpeedGuage:

That's right, John. You're making an excellent point. I mean, I'm, I just wrote an article that's going to be published later on this month, and I could share with you guys on, uh, making, uh, using data, uh, and making it a positive experience and the concept of it is that, well, We all have access to data. We all are both receiving data and you and producing data. I mean, when we think about it, everybody produce an enormous amount of data on a daily basis. That is the driver dispatch the insurance company. Everybody is producing enormous amount of data, and we don't understanding well. And so my, uh, supposition is that we need to build a positive relationship, uh, for everybody using the data. If we create a positive relationship, then, um, you know, we are, everybody is going to be starting to using it to better what they are doing. And, um, there was a, um, A book written by Karen Levy called Data Driven. I was looking at it. I have it here and it's about the trucking industry and her preposition is that the trucking industry is using data and the driver feel that they are being spied by the by the industry. And so that's a, for me, that's a perfect example of negative relationship with the data when in fact, uh, if we admit that data is part of life and that everybody from the driver, the manager, the, the fleet owners, uh, you know, the, the risk consultant, the, you know, the insurance company, uh, If we all agree that the data is there and there to last, then let's have a positive discussion. Mm-hmm.. And let's be able to communicate using some common languages so that we can know what we are talking about when we use data. And that's my, the preposition of the article that I'm, uh, I'm going to have published is really, um, we need to use the data, all of us. In a way that is going to provide positive result, and I think we can do that one of the one of the tool that speed gauge has developed in the last four or five years. It's what's called the first score. It's a way very simply to understand the risk from the driver all the way through the insurance industry to underwriters or even reinsurers. And so that way we empower everybody. To make positive decision. And, you know, instead of being worried about what's happening, then you have a tool now to manage risk, to understand risk, and to be able to communicate that risk to everyone. Everybody can be empowered. And I think that when you have this type of tool, you start building positive relationship, uh, with data. And I think that's fundamental.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg:

Well, I think one of the key things to data is that you share it. If you are transparent and sharing it, in this case, let's talk drivers, because you had mentioned they sometimes have a negative relationship with the data, then if you share it transparently, It should be accepted, uh, in a way that's, that's positive. You've got to present it positively. I think the best risk managers or safety managers now are really delving deep into the data and sharing it with their drivers.

Gui Orilac, SpeedGuage:

Yeah. I think you should go ahead. No, no, go

John Farquhar, Summit Risk Solutions:

ahead. Well, I was going to say it's, it's really key to educate your drivers. On the purpose of the data, you know, so yes, being transparent is very key, but educate them on what you're looking at, why you're looking at it, what's going on and how it can help that driver to be a better driver, right? And, and, and give them the tools so that they can manage it themselves. It's almost like, I'm not going to manage it for you. But I'm going to provide you with the educational aspect, the coaching opportunity to better understand what's going on with this data. I'll hand you the data. You can see it in a form that you can read to go, Oh my gosh, now I see where I'm, I need to improve. I can work on those things myself.

Gui Orilac, SpeedGuage:

And I think the other part, I will say, um, uh, that we like it or not, the data. Exist. Yes. It doesn't matter at all. Okay, that you may not want to use the data. You may want to ignore everything, but in the reality of it, the data exists. So my, uh, theory is. Make it your friend. Make the data your friend. As a driver, leverage it. Leverage it to show your management that you're a good driver. To maybe ask for a few cents more per mile. If, uh, you know, if you can prove them that you, You are a good driver, they want to be part, they want to be your friend. I mean, there's always going to be the case where it's not going to happen. However, in general, everybody wants better results, you know,

John Farquhar, Summit Risk Solutions:

I was going to say, there's a phrase I've used many times. And Chris has heard me say this. There's no driver that wants to be a bad driver. They just don't know how to be a good driver.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg:

Well, and imagine we know how transient drivers are. Could you imagine if the driver was able to take their data with them and show it in a job interview and say, here, look at, here's my data for the last six months. Damn, I'm good. I need top, uh, I need to be paid at the top because here's the data saying that I'm very good at my job.

Gui Orilac, SpeedGuage:

That's right. And so that brings us back to, you know, what is speed gauge doing, which is different than the rest or the driven data network, which is different than the rest of the industry is, uh, you know, most when you look at the risk, uh, management industry and what we call basically the insurance industry, everybody, um, you know, is worried about increasing premium. And so my from what I understand from the industry, there's really rarely a decrease in premium. So it's a question because and and that's for a number of reasons that we can talk about. But, uh, the the idea is that can you Limit the increase in your premium, or can you prove that, you know, you are a responsible, um, company days in, days out, you know, and how would you do that? So, one of the, you know, I, I go to risk management conference and insurance conference on a regular basis because there's a lot of, always a lot to learn. There's a lot of people to meet that talk about, try to solve this problem, and they try to solve this problem. Understanding that everybody is part of the solution, because we need to always, and that's what SpeedGauge has always been focusing on, and what the Driven Data Network will always focus on, is both the driver and the fleet, or the transportation company. We, we think that, you know, we have to work with them at the core, uh, for success. Okay? Uh, when we, I went to, for example, one of my last conference was RIM in Atlanta. And it's a huge risk management conference where professionals from all over the world show up to talk about insurance, insurance problems. And one of the big topic of discussion is how to start using operational data rather than using maybe historical or actuarial data. How do we change the way we use data? So to provide better insight and better risk management and better pricing. Um, you know, there is that concept also of usage based insurance. How can you do that? One of the biggest challenge my take on it is for the transport insurance, commercial transportation or commercial auto industry, um, is that they don't have access to updated data. And risk management. When we think about it for insurance company is only done in principle once a year, I mean, you all have worked with, uh, transportation company and fleets and everybody and in the insurance industry is also very worried about that the last 90 day before renewal. That's the only thing that people talk about, okay? It's like everybody's worried and wetting their pants because you're 90 days before your norm, you know? I mean, you talk to a broker, an insurance company, you talk to a fleet, to a driver, 90 days before your norm. Before, what, before those 90 days, nothing exists. And after this nice tea day, Everybody is like, reflecting, well, I'm going to have another year before I have to think about it again. So, and what you are realizing, and it's not a very efficient way of doing business, of managing your operations. In fact, there Intuit. And they are very successful and still have a very successful accounting and software and it was accounting and tax software. And, you know, tax is once a year in the United States, it's on April 14th or so, for that matter, you know, and so like 90 days before everybody's like freaking out. And so the same thing is so into it was. You know, everything was focusing on the 90 days before tax season to release new product, to do marketing and all that kind of things. And they realized that, um, well, that was not working. They did not have the time and the resources to put to, to generate enough input from their customer. If the release was not working, it was a disaster for that year's sales of their software. And so then... Um, they decided to, uh, start releasing new product to start, you know, engaging with customers, not only not 90 days before tax season, but during the whole year. So then after tax season, they started to, um, work with their clients and they realize that now that. They could make improvement to their, uh, technology and software and solution for the client on an ongoing basis. My... Uh, and you can read about that in a book called, uh, The Lean Startup, uh, from, uh, Eric Ryan. It's a really astonishing book. It's really fascinating. It talks about ongoing, uh, improvement. MyTech is one of the best management books that you can have around. And it talks about, you can do a lot of things by doing incremental improvement. You don't have to make... Major changes. I don't know if you guys appreciate that, but that's a huge from the insurance perspective and risk management perspective. It's not about making many changes. It's too much. Understand where you're at and do an ongoing, uh, improvement. Yeah.

John Farquhar, Summit Risk Solutions:

One of the big problems we see is, is management wants instant change. They want big improvements, but you can't have it that way. It doesn't work that way. It's like a big ship. You just can't spin it around like a little dinghy. You know, so you've got to make those incremental changes and you have to continue it during your course of action To make sure that you keep that ship on course. So a lot of times yeah, okay Oh, we're seeing a dip over here. We got to work on these so we just make that slight change. So and that's when managing that data on a regular basis That's where you can see and make those changes as you

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg:

go along. And you make your, yeah. Sorry, I was going to relate this back to my time as a director of safety using speed gauge. I had a huge speeding problem. And so my goal wasn't to immediately cut down on the speeding. I set my goal to each month to reduce by a small fraction to hit the top five worst drivers and get them to change a little bit because we all know a massive change is hugely disruptive. But Small little tweaks, which can be huge given a whole year, um, you know, one, as they say, how, you know, how do you eat an elephant? It's one bite at a time. So let

Gui Orilac, SpeedGuage:

me ask you, Chris and Joe, let me ask you this question. What is the cost of insurance for a transportation company?

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg:

Too much? Expensive. It's a

Gui Orilac, SpeedGuage:

significant amount. Of the mile that you're driving. So, uh, for, uh, to, to make a difference if you manage it or not. So when, uh, and I, I'm going to relate to Chris what you were saying is that it's all about incremental differences. But the first thing is that you need to understand the risk that you are generating. In fact, assuming that you don't have a risk, your job is driving. Your company's job is to bring. Goods from point A to point B, which is awesome and like, you know, in construction or like drive, like other, um, activities, it has a risk factor, just trying to, to believe that there is no risk when you're driving, it's crazy. Okay. And I don't like that, but we, we seem that we are in a, in a world where people don't want to acknowledge the fact that there is a basic risk to, to do what you do. Okay. I mean, I guess me looking at data is less risky than driving. So let's acknowledge that. But in everything we do, there is some type of potential risk. Okay. And so then the question is, first, we need to be clear about that. There is a risk. And then from that, what does that mean to engage with that risk? And it's really fundamental to understand that. So, you know, as you pointed out, the speed gauge, which is evolving towards becoming really a data platform or the driven data network, because really we intend to connect the whole industry. through one location to using standardized data. So that's really important. So one of our major applications, as I have alluded to, is for the insurance industry. Because as Chris, you mentioned you were a safety director. Well, think about that. Safety is, is related to, uh, insurance, but there's not, uh, we don't think of it as a direct connection. And, but there is in fact, uh, a direct connection to, to risk, okay, to risk management. And so, uh, SpeedGauge using the FAIR score has created what's called a FAIR score to really put a number and to link, uh, risk or behavior to, Um, uh, to insurance risk and 2 create a link between the behavior on the road and the dollar amount that is related to manage your risk, which if you just focus on safety, you don't really see that. But when you start moving toward risk management and applying an actual dollar amount, then you can start understanding the correlation between what you do on the road, how you manage risk, to the, uh, amount of premium that you will have to pay, uh, next year or this coming, uh, renewal. So that's what, uh, SpeedGauge has created. And has created the fair score and trying to make it very simple so that from the driver to the underwriter. They can understand the same number. There's no mystery. There's no voodoo type of. Well, I don't know if I can, if that relate to what you experienced. What I

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg:

was going to say is you said from the carrier to the underwriter, but let's not forget the prosecuting attorney in that thing, because data is data and it's all available.

Gui Orilac, SpeedGuage:

It's all available and that's right. So I do believe, I don't like to think in terms of fear. So you mentioned the prosecuting attorney. I think that as proven by the accident in recent accident in Canada Uh the I believe the use of camera was able to do this to make sure that you know The driver was not uh, the primary source of liability of problem, you know So I think that you know, uh, yes, we all have the fear of the attorney But I think the first thing we need to understand is that we need to be able to understand and measure the risk. So understanding and measuring the risk is in a very simple way. Is that what we have started with? And to do that on an ongoing basis, because here's the other trick. When I was saying everybody's worrying about the 90 days to renewal, everybody is looking at what? They are looking at historical data or past data or actuarial data. Okay. Now, in a fleet, let's just say a fleet, uh, 30% turnover every year. 100 drivers, 100 drivers, 30% turnover every year. Well, that, what does that mean? Is that the risk at the beginning of the year is very different during, during the policy period. And at the end of the year, so the risk of change during the time period, and nobody is paying attention to that. Okay, so with the fair score, with the technology and the normalization that the Driven Data Network and SpeedGauge has, Come together. Well, now you can effectively have insight on the risk during the policy period, which allow both the fleet, brokers, insurance companies to really understand what they can do and how to help one another so that at the end of the year when the renewal, uh, occur, everybody's on the same page. You don't have to worry for 90 days because you took control. Thank you. Of your solution from the get go, you can empower your driver with it, which is, for me, fundamental, you know, and then we move on from that.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg:

All right, Gui, I think that is a wonderful place to wrap that up because I think that was the wrap up. Okay, well, no, I'm just saying we've already hit 30 minutes. I can't believe it. Well, no. No, it's good. No, it's good. Yeah. So what I heard you say there at the end was that you're empowering the driver, the carrier, the insurance provider and the safety director all together because they're all using the data. They don't have to worry about insurance renewal at the last 90 days because really you're managing it 365 days of the year. Yeah,

Gui Orilac, SpeedGuage:

exactly. And we created this, uh, what we call, uh, you know, a common language, one tool, one way of communication. So, you know, it's not my French or John's, whatever English, gibberish, gibberish, my French or, you know, we, we are not, uh, we are using one common language, which is a fair score to understand one another from the driver at the driver level. At the fleet level and you know, uh, and all the way through the chain of, uh, understanding and risk management. And it's based on actual operational data.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg:

So for our listeners and watchers today who want more information on FAIRscore, they should reach out to Gui at Speed Gauge and get more info, right? Yeah, that's right.

Gui Orilac, SpeedGuage:

You know, and so I'm going to, uh. Not spell my name and spell my email address because like people you're going to tune out. We'll

John Farquhar, Summit Risk Solutions:

put a link in the show notes below.

Chris Harris, Safety Dawg:

It'll be easy. Exactly. Gui information and his email is in the show notes down below. So I encourage you all to reach out to Gui at SpeedGuage. That was awesome, Gui. Thanks so much for coming on the Trucking Risk and Insurance podcast. That was awesome Guy. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Uh, for all of you, his, Guy's contact info is in the show notes down below. If you want to know more about speed gauge and fare score, please reach out to Guy. That's it for this week. Join John and I again next week as we bring you another episode of the Trucking Risk and Insurance Podcast.