Client story Leveraging IoT & AI to Curb Fuel Theft in Australia
Scancam wanted to scale their solution for curbing fuel theft. Insight redeveloped their application and remote monitoring capabilities to provide a more stable solutions for their customers.
By Insight Editor / 21 Nov 2018 / Topics: Customer experience Cloud Intelligent edge
Facts at a glance
Client industry:
Security
Challenge:
The client was looking for a new platform with the scalability they needed to help continue their mission to curbing fuel theft.
Solution:
- Redevelopment of the iOS app on Xamarin and C# and rebuilding the back-end services, deploying it with Microsoft Azure.
- Azure App Services for web and API management
- Application Insights for telemetry
- IoT Suite for remote monitoring, managing and securing device communications
Results:
- A better and more stable solution for Scancam’s customers
- Ability to capture and analyse more telemetry about the system as a whole
- Operational data insights to pinpoint system bottlenecks and issues
Solution area:
Insight’s Digital Innovation solutions help clients digitally transform their business operations to remain competitive.
The concept and the challenge
A global solution to fuel theft
Last year, the estimated cost of petrol station drive-offs was estimated at an all time high. So Eion Byrne and Anthony Schmidt, after watching petrol station operators struggling with an inefficient, inaccurate and manual process, decided to do something about it. They came up with Scancam, an innovative technology that works by scanning plates at service stations, sending the scanned plate for plate recognition, recording plate detections and counter checking against a database of offenders. It was an incredibly simple idea – but it wasn’t scalable in their current platform. That’s where Insight enters the story.
The solution
A fix on the back of a napkin
We met Eion and Anthony at a startup event, and they quickly outlined their plans and their technological constraints. “We shared our plans with Josh Boys, ‘Ignia [an Insight Company]’ Director over a beer and by the end of the night, he’d essentially designed a new architecture for us on the back of a napkin. With our aggressive growth plans, we needed a platform that can scale with the business and reduce operational costs. Josh had us sold on what Microsoft Azure and IoT can do for us within that first meeting,” recalled Anthony.
Another great outcome
Taking Aussie ingenuity to the world
Since that first meeting, we’ve been a key part of Scancam’s incredible growth in Australia and beyond. The Scancam system handles thousands of plates at every station, and has already boasted incredible results including a 63% drop in fuel loss and a man-hour reduction of over 80%.
The new features enabled by Insight’s use of the Azure platform, including facial recognition software, have incredible growth potential for the Scancam both internationally and within state police departments to help combat crime. And it all began, as all great plans do, on the back of a napkin.
"Most importantly, small business owners have finally been delivered with the ability to recover debt – a crippling factor in the fuel industry’s practices for years."
