Thought Leaders in Big Data: Steve Bryan, CEO of Vigillo (Part 5)

Steve Bryan: There’re a lot of mergers and acquisitions in the space. If a company merges with another, then they have half of one company’s telematics technology and half their fleet has the other. Now they’ve got two different companies doing their data analytics on half the fleet. That’s where we sit in the middle and take it all in. When you define it that way, then we don’t have any competition.

Sramana Mitra: I’m going to switch gears. If you look at your industry and you look at the holy grail of what you would like to do with this data or what your customers would like to do with this data, what are some of the things out there that you would like to do over time using your ability to analyze data and provide actionable insights? >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Steve Bryan, CEO of Vigillo (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How big is your business?

Steve Bryan: We are in the range of about $5 to $6 million a year.

Sramana Mitra: How big is the TAM for the business? >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Steve Bryan, CEO of Vigillo (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Can we do some use cases and illustrate specifically how this all plays out?

Steve Bryan: Apart from the legal and regulatory aspects, we also specialize in fuel management. Consider this: the industry covers 400 billion miles a year, which is equivalent to over 4,000 trips to the sun. Anything that they can do to wring out the slightest efficiency in fuel economy translates into staggeringly large numbers for them. They are always interested in monitoring the on-going fuel burn rate and how much they are paying for new fuel. If you can drive one mile further and save one-tenth of a gallon filling these large trucks and do that over a period of time, it adds up to millions of dollars. Data on fuel prices and fuel consumption rates around the country adds huge value to the motor carrier. >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Steve Bryan, CEO of Vigillo (Part 2)

Steve Bryan: The second way is through inspection stations. In addition to being weighed, the trucks are also subjected to inspections by similarly-trained law enforcement people. Those are the two modes of interaction that trucking companies have with law enforcement. They open up their book and there are about 3,000 different violations that could be written on the tractor, the trailer, and the driver in every single one of those interactions. About 825 of those violations have been designated by the DOT, specifically the agency within the DOT responsible for motor vehicle safety called the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCFA). The FMCFA collects data specifically on about 820 of these violations and runs them through a scoring system.

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Thought Leaders in Big Data: Steve Bryan, CEO of Vigillo (Part 1)

I am a big fan of niche Big Data applications. Here’s one focused on the trucking industry!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with some introduction about yourself as well as Vigillo.

Steve Bryan: The Latin word vigillo means vigilant. That is the backbone of what we do for our customers. We are just past our seventh year in business. I founded the company in 2007. Essentially, what we do is help trucking companies manage the vast amounts of data that are generated by and collected about them and their operations. We deal mostly with the trucking companies that operate the large 18-wheeler commercial motor vehicles that haul the nation’s freight up and down the nation’s highways. We have several thousands of them who subscribe to various analytics and reporting services that we offer to the industry. >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Charlie Lougheed, Co-Founder and President of Explorys (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How do you see that playing out? Are you saying that physicians around the world start sharing case studies on how they have treated certain cases and what results they have gotten in some sort of a central exchange? Then the system does analysis and recommends specific instances. Is that what you’re saying?

Charlie Lougheed: Yes. Data within Explorys has two forms. One form is completely de-identified. What that de-identified form allows organizations to do is see patterns that are similar to theirs, expressed across a very large population. You have this statistical relevance. On top of that, one of the things that we provide is a technology platform that substrate and process a massive amount of data >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Charlie Lougheed, Co-Founder and President of Explorys (Part 4)

Charlie Lougheed: There’s a mix of different vendors in the space. There are those that are pure play technology vendors—the IBMs and the Oracles of the world that often purchase technology and then configure and deploy it to run, oftentimes, behind the firewalls within these organizations. Another component from the competitor standpoint is actually some of the payers themselves. They form or acquire technology companies so that they can offer these services to the providers—usually in a cloud form, which is somewhat similar to what we do.

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Thought Leaders in Big Data: Charlie Lougheed, Co-Founder and President of Explorys (Part 3)

Charlie Lougheed: As these healthcare organizations look to those who pay for the care, which are either the private insurers or Medicare, you see a move towards value-based care. Rather than paying for all the associated services with that patient’s admission into the hospital, you instead get a flat rate for that patient to take care of them. Anything above that, they may be able to share an additional share of savings.

To do that, you have to be able to do three things. The first thing is understand what the population looks like, where the risk is in that population, and what parts of that risk can you do something about. Once you have that, the second thing that we provide is >>>