New VisionLink® Helps Customers Manage Their Entire Fleets
April 6, 2023
Caterpillar customers are busy people with important jobs, and communities depend on them to get those jobs done. Unplanned equipment downtime or underutilization of assets can literally make the difference between a thriving business or one that fails.
It’s one reason customers of all types and sizes depend on Caterpillar and Cat® dealers to help manage their assets. A strong equipment management program maximizes component life, improves productivity, reduces costs, and even enhances worksite safety.
Enter the new VisionLink
We recently unveiled the new VisionLink at North America’s largest construction tradeshow, CONEXPO. The introduction created quite a buzz – and with good reason. Our new cloud-based, customer-facing platform provides an integrated full-fleet management solution to track assets, maximize machine uptime, and optimize utilization. The platform is scalable for customers of all sizes and offers streamlined subscription levels to suit varying customer needs.
Of course, Caterpillar’s presence in equipment management services isn’t new. But we integrated our three previous offerings and added a refreshed, intuitive interface that now delivers a solution to help customers efficiently manage their entire fleet, regardless of manufacturer. Best of all, migration from the three retired products to the new VisionLink will be seamless for customers, automatically moving user accounts, asset information, current subscriptions, and custom settings to the new platform.
The updated version continues to offer core telematics data standard with every machine to answer important questions about assets, including daily location, utilization, fuel usage, and maintenance reminders, and integrates with Caterpillar’s extensive digital ecosystem.
Top 4 New Features
Here are four new VisionLink features we’re excited about:
Full Fleet Visualization allows customers to access all their asset information for both Cat and non-Cat equipment – whether owned, leased or rented – in one centralized place. Easy-to-use dashboards allow customers to track by projects, groups, and geofences.
“Needs Review” is a new feature that brings focus to instances that need action, creates workflows to schedule tasks, and provides links to buy parts or request services.
Task Management creates and assigns tasks to ensure maintenance or service completion.
Mobile App is optimized for smartphones to keep on-the-go customers updated with key metrics, asset locations, fuel levels, idle time, and more.
How it Came Together
For Caterpillar employees and partners, working on this project was ambitious, exciting and challenging – all at the same time. Caterpillar Senior Digital Product Manager Nick Redd is deeply involved with the development of the new VisionLink.
“We knew that in order to create a best-in-class equipment management product and support Caterpillar’s services growth goals, we needed to create an integrated, fleet-agnostic tool that makes it easy to do business with Caterpillar – whether that’s buying parts, scheduling services, or resolving maintenance issues. Over the course of our three-year journey, we developed over 1,600 features for the app, made hundreds of customer visits, and had more than 15 teams work on development,” Nick said.
“The result is a powerful demonstration of what can be achieved through an integrated digital portfolio. Of course, VisionLink couldn’t exist without Caterpillar’s 1.4M+ connected assets or without our digital platform – which we rely on to run advanced analytics and transform data into business-changing insights. Building these foundational digital products in tandem has been a tremendous challenge, but it’s also made our offerings better by combining customer-centricity with technical feasibility. I’m beyond proud of the core VisionLink team and the many, many stakeholders – within Caterpillar and our customers and dealers – who have partnered, often working long hours and fielding countless curveballs to achieve this big milestone.”
Customer Focus
At Caterpillar, we build products customers depend on – and that means providing not only equipment to get the job done but solutions to address jobsite and equipment management processes. Every decision made throughout an asset’s lifetime, including daily operations and routine maintenance, impacts the cost per productive work unit.
The new VisionLink helps customers make more informed decisions about their equipment, resulting in higher productivity and lower costs – but we’ll not stop here. With some of the industry’s best minds continually working on ways to improve customer success, who knows where we’ll be tomorrow?
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