For years, the promise of fleet technology was greater visibility.
Know where vehicles are. Understand how drivers are performing. Monitor maintenance. Optimize routes. Reduce fuel consumption. Improve safety.
In 2026, visibility alone is no longer the finish line.
As fleets become increasingly connected, the bigger challenge is turning growing volumes of vehicle, driver and workforce data into information that teams can actually use—without adding unnecessary cost, hardware or operational complexity.
The latest industry research illustrates the shift. Three out of four fleet professionals surveyed by Verizon Connect now use at least one of GPS fleet tracking, video telematics or asset tracking technologies. At the same time, SambaSafety reports that 88% of fleets use telematics for safety, yet 66% say interpreting or acting on telematics data remains a challenge.
For fleet and mobile workforce leaders, that creates a new question: How do you turn connectivity into action? From “Where is my vehicle?” to “What should I do next?”
The evolution of fleet management can be seen in the questions operators need their technology to answer.
Basic location remains important, but increasingly it is only one piece of the operational picture. Fleet leaders also need to understand vehicle health, maintenance requirements, driver activity, workforce utilization and exceptions that require attention.
That need is growing as operating costs remain a major concern. Fleetio’s 2026 survey of more than 600 fleet professionals found 54.4% named rising costs as their top concern, while 40.1% of maintenance captured in its research was unscheduled.
The opportunity for IoT and telematics, therefore, isn’t simply to produce more data. It’s to connect the right data at the right time so organizations can make better operational decisions.
That can mean knowing which technician is best positioned to respond to a customer, identifying maintenance needs before they become a larger operational disruption, understanding whether vehicles and assets are being utilized effectively, or giving managers better information for coaching drivers.
The value is in what happens after the data arrives.
The mobile workforce is part of the fleet
There’s another important change taking place: fleet management and workforce management are becoming increasingly interconnected.
For field service businesses, utilities, installation teams and other mobile operations, the vehicle is only one component of service delivery. The employee or contractor, their location, their schedule, their arrival at the customer site and the availability of the vehicle all contribute to operational performance.
That makes it increasingly useful to connect vehicle intelligence with workforce visibility.
Smartphone-based technology can also change how some of these capabilities are deployed. Rather than assuming every use case requires additional dedicated hardware from day one, mobile-first approaches can use technology workers already carry to support capabilities such as location visibility, trip history, geofencing and workforce reporting.
Catrak’s Drivestream, for example, provides asset management and field service organizations with real-time visibility without requiring dedicated vehicle hardware for its core mobile-first capabilities. Drivestream Plus extends the model with a connected CAN transmitter designed to add vehicle health, performance and maintenance intelligence.
That creates the potential for a more progressive approach to fleet digitization: begin with the visibility a business needs today, then add deeper connected-vehicle intelligence as requirements evolve.
Complexity is becoming the next fleet challenge
More technology does not automatically create simpler operations.
SambaSafety’s 2025 research found 70% of fleets use two or more device types to manage safety, while nearly 40% planned to add devices in the following year.
Meanwhile, Fleetio reports that 30.8% of fleet managers still rely on spreadsheets for tracking, highlighting how digital and manual processes can continue to coexist even as fleets adopt more sophisticated technology.
The result can be a fragmented technology environment: multiple devices, connectivity arrangements, applications and datasets that operations teams somehow have to bring together.
For IoT-enabled fleet solutions, this puts a premium on simplifying what happens behind the application.
Devices need to connect reliably. Deployments need to scale. Assets may need to move between active and inactive service. Fleets may cross network or geographic boundaries. And organizations need to manage all of this without connectivity itself becoming another operational burden.
Connectivity has to follow the asset lifecycle
A connected fleet asset doesn’t necessarily remain connected in exactly the same way throughout its life.
A device may sit dormant before deployment. It may then be activated for a customer, temporarily suspended, reactivated or moved into a different operating environment.
This is one of the challenges Catrak encountered as it expanded its connected vehicle portfolio.
With Drivestream Plus, the company needed connectivity capable of supporting custom device configurations and mixed deployment models while accommodating assets moving between dormant, active and inactive states. It also wanted a foundation that could support expansion across networks and geographies without maintaining separate SIM inventories or connectivity programs for each market.
KORE worked with Catrak on a customized Super SIM™ solution combining multi-network connectivity with centralized provisioning, activation, suspension and usage management.
This is an important consideration for the next generation of fleet IoT.
Connectivity shouldn’t dictate how the business operates. It should be flexible enough to follow how the business operates.
Predictive maintenance raises the stakes for connected data
Maintenance provides a good example of why this matters.
Fleetio’s analysis found a particularly striking relationship between vehicle age and service expenditure: vehicles 10 years old or older represented 12% of miles in its dataset but accounted for 34% of service spend.
At the same time, maintenance and repair costs continue to put pressure on operators. Industry analysis published in late 2025 reported average repair costs had increased another 3% year over year, following a 4% increase in 2024.
Connected diagnostics can help shift maintenance from a largely scheduled or reactive exercise toward one informed by actual vehicle condition and performance.
That changes the value equation for IoT. Knowing a vehicle’s location is useful. Knowing its location and having timely information about its health can help operations teams make more informed decisions about when it should remain on the road and when it requires attention.
Catrak designed Drivestream Plus to add this deeper layer of connected vehicle diagnostics, maintenance monitoring and fleet health management to its mobile-first portfolio.
Safety is becoming a data-driven discipline
The same transition is happening in fleet safety.
SambaSafety reports that 88% of fleets now use telematics for safety, demonstrating how firmly connected data has become embedded in fleet risk management.
Verizon Connect’s 2026 research found 46% of surveyed fleet professionals now use video telematics, up 10 percentage points from 2023. Its survey also found that users of GPS fleet tracking reported an average 19% decrease in accident costs, alongside average reductions of 15% in maintenance costs and 12% in fuel costs. These are reported outcomes among surveyed technology users rather than guaranteed results for every fleet.
The direction is significant: fleet technology is moving beyond recording what happened toward helping organizations identify patterns, coach drivers and intervene earlier.
But again, data volume isn’t the goal.
The goal is actionable intelligence.
Building a fleet technology strategy for what comes next
The next phase of fleet transformation is unlikely to be defined by a single technology.
It will come from connecting vehicle intelligence, workforce visibility, maintenance data and operational workflows—and making that ecosystem easier to deploy and manage.
For fleet operators evaluating their next steps, that means looking beyond a checklist of features.
Consider whether your technology strategy can adapt as the fleet grows. Whether connectivity can follow assets through their lifecycle. Whether mobile-first deployment could lower the barrier to entry for appropriate use cases. Whether deeper vehicle intelligence can be added when it’s required. And, critically, whether the data being generated helps teams make faster and better decisions rather than creating another system they need to manage.
Catrak’s experience provides one example of what this evolution can look like.
Following the launch of its smartphone-based Drivestream platform, Catrak expanded the ecosystem with Drivestream Plus, creating a path from mobile-first workforce and fleet visibility to connected vehicle diagnostics and maintenance intelligence. The company’s initial targeted deployment regions achieved a 78% adoption rate for its smartphone-only solution, while Drivestream recorded more than 18,000 downloads within 90 days—nearly 500% above its 3,000-download stretch objective.
Behind those applications is a connectivity strategy designed to scale with Catrak’s devices, customers and evolving business model.
See how Catrak built a more flexible foundation for connected fleet innovation
Discover how Catrak Technologies worked with KORE to support Drivestream Plus with multi-network connectivity, lifecycle-based activation and a customized commercial model designed around the realities of connected fleet deployments.
Read the updated case study: Driving Innovation: How Catrak and KORE Revolutionized Fleet Connectivity.
Published September 28, 2026.