At UPS, there's data everywhere: on the packages that get delivered. On the drivers, who carry handheld computers to record customer interactions. And on those ubiquitous brown trucks.

It's only recently, however, that the company found value in connecting those data sets to each other.

Those brown UPS vehicles actually contain a wealth of data drawn from more than 200 sources housed inside the trucks: sensors in the engines gathering data on vehicle speeds, RPMs, oil pressure and engine temperature. In addition, other sensors track the number of times a truck goes in reverse, what doors are open and when, the time the truck spends idling, and how and when the seatbelt is being used. Just to name a few.

"There's just a slew of data coming out all the time," says Jack Levis, a manager in UPS's industrial engineering group. For a while, the company used this mechanical vehicle data to help schedule routine maintenance checks. (See "The Perils and Promise of Real-Time Data" and "How Master Data Management Unified Financial Reporting at Nationwide Insurance" for more on data management.)

Then there is data about customer interactions. UPS is known for religiously tracking all kinds of customer interaction data (captured via the drivers' handheld DIAD devices) and has accumulated tons of historical data over the years. This includes such things as: addresses that have been delivered to, where and when pick ups have occurred, and any types of customer interactions.

In addition, GPS devices installed in UPS's fleet of trucks a couple of years ago, which let dispatchers more efficiently route deliveries and helps lost drivers, records precise mapping data, such as street names, addresses and latitudinal and longitudinal information. (To read more on UPS's GPS rollout, see "New Wireless Networks and Devices Create More Productive Workforce.")

While certainly vast, these individual data sets, however, had no real connection to each other. "There's just this pile of data that means nothing to anybody," Levis says.

But, Levis says, as these things typically happen at UPS, several years ago two UPS employees wondered what automotive and operational insights could be derived from marrying the three disparate data sets.

After months and months of experimentation and research, UPS's telematics program was born. ("Telematics is a big word," Levis says, "but it just means a computer is gathering data.") To the researchers, the telematics application would paint a very detailed picture of a truck's and its driver's day together.