Linamar Corp.’s Skyjack division unveiled its telematics solution, ELEVATE, in February 2018. Today, Skyjack’s telematics solution has won six awards on three different continents and is being shipped on 50 percent of machines leaving its facilities.
“When we started this project, we analyzed existing telematics products and knew that they weren’t enough for our customers, many of which operate mixed fleets with various sizes of machines, and the low adoption rates of those previous products prove that,” said David Swan, product manager of technology and innovation at Skyjack. “ELEVATE provides customers with the opportunity of a fully connected fleet, and delivers value to rental fleets from every size of machine, from scissor lifts to telehandlers. The only way we could see us providing our customers with true telematics value was to provide them with a solution that we, the OEM had a hand in designing.”
ELEVATE, and products within its digital suite, have won an ALH Award for Access Rental Innovation, an IAPA Award for Innovative Technology, a LLEAP Award for OEM Essential Services, an Editor’s Choice Award from Rental Magazine, and two Best New Product Awards one from HIRE19 and the other from HIANZ.
“We worked really hard, and worked a lot with our customers, to ensure that ELEVATE, and the products within its digital suite hit the mark of being ‘More than Telematics’,” said Swan. “These awards are proof that what we saw in previous telematics products wasn’t enough, and that we developed a solution that is helping our customers improve their day-to-day business practices.”
The original launch of ELEVATE included three products within its digital product suite: ELEVATE Manager, designed as a high-level dashboard for fleet managers; ELEVATE ON, designed to help operators on-site log machine usage and complete pre-use inspections; and ELEVATE GO, designed to provide service technicians with remote visibility to the machine. Working with its customers, Skyjack fine-tuned its existing digital products to further pinpoint specific data sets that rental companies are looking for.
“The next digital products we’re actively working on are enhanced versions of ELEVATE Manager and ELEVATE GO, along with new products like ELEVATE Live and ELEVATE’s battery management system,” Swan said. “These enhancements and new products are designed to better service our customer and operator user experience.”
To learn more about Skyjack’s telematics solution, visit www.skyjack.com/elevate.
About the Author
Michael Roth
Editor
Michael Roth has covered the equipment rental industry full time for RER since 1989 and has served as the magazine’s editor in chief since 1994. He has nearly 30 years experience as a professional journalist. Roth has visited hundreds of rental centers and industry manufacturers, written hundreds of feature stories for RER and thousands of news stories for the magazine and its electronic newsletter RER Reports. Roth has interviewed leading executives for most of the industry’s largest rental companies and manufacturers as well as hundreds of smaller independent companies. He has visited with and reported on rental companies and manufacturers in Europe, Central America and Asia as well as Mexico, Canada and the United States. Roth was co-founder of RER Reports, the industry’s first weekly newsletter, which began as a fax newsletter in 1996, and later became an online newsletter. Roth has spoken at conventions sponsored by the American Rental Association, Associated Equipment Distributors, California Rental Association and other industry events and has spoken before industry groups in several countries. He lives and works in Los Angeles when he’s not traveling to cover industry events.