Open Access

Christoph Heinbach, Friedemann Kammler, Oliver Thomas

• Road freight operators (RFOs) optimize their fleet management pro- cesses using fleet telematics systems (FTSs). Therefore, the selection of FTSs by RFOs is driven by transport specifications from the customer side leading to sub- stantial search costs. However, FTSs vary significantly in their design require- ments to assist road freight operations. Hence, we analyze 74 web pages from FTSs of existing telematics vendors to elicit 31 design requirements (DRs) which we aggregated into nine requirement sets (RSs). Subsequently, 42 practitioners from five digital road freight service enterprises experienced in using FTSs vali- date the DRs and evaluate their importance with RSs following the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. The results reveal that DRs and RSs promot- ing driver monitoring and IT integration are perceived more important than items promoting fleet and logistics support. Our contribution sheds light on an emerg- ing topic in logistics and establishes a knowledge base that guides the design of future FTSs.