This Alexa app helps companies manage their fleets

New Jersey-based ARI is trying to bringing voice recognition and artificial intelligence into a decidedly unsexy vertical: fleet management services.

The company, which is tasked with managing 1.4 million vehicles in North America for organizations like Comcast and New Jersey Transit, developed an Alexa app that lets its customers get data points from its ARI insights system. It launched the platform — reportedly the fleet industry’s first voice-based technology — last week at a conference in Florida.

“As Alexa, and other technologies like it, creep into more parts of our daily lives, it made sense for us to explore if our clients would benefit from this new way of engaging with ARI,” said  Don Woods, the company’s head of client information services.

Through voice commands, users of the company’s platform can ask Amazon’s digital assistant to provide data on fuel usage, accidents, maintenance, downtime and purchase orders for a group of vehicles. Currently on a pilot program, the company’s looking to evaluate if the app improves efficiency for its clients.

“We hope to learn more about how people actually want to use the technology in the field and if it creates efficiencies in managing their fleet,” said Woods.

ARI, owned by Holman Enterprises and headquartered in Mount Laurel, N.J., employs close to 1,600. It has outposts in Mexico, Canada, Germany and the U.K.