Anita Mueller
Vice President – Club and Automative
Lena Yam
Product Director – Emergency Roadside Services
CAA Club Group’s new predictive analytics engine is making roadside service safer and faster than ever before.
Most Canadians are familiar with CAA and its emergency roadside service, member reward savings, and comprehensive insurance, travel, and automotive offerings. For its over 2.5 million members in South Central Ontario and Manitoba, CAA Club Group (CCG) is synonymous with peace of mind. Locked your keys (or, heaven forbid, your baby) in the car? Stranded on the side of the highway with a flat tire? CAA is always on standby, ready to come to the rescue — and now, thanks to a cutting-edge predictive technology tool called Geo-Temporal Gen 2, CAA is getting there even faster.
Harnessing the power of real-time data and machine learning
Gen 2’s engine consists of mathematical algorithms and statistical models that use our dispatch data — including historical yearend roadside data — in addition to real-time data,” explains Lena Yam, Product Director of Emergency Roadside Services at CCG. That real-time geospatial and temporal data includes traffic patterns, road construction, meteorological data, and GPS data from CCG’s fleet of network tow operators.
“We run a number of machine-learning algorithms in the background and incorporate various statistical models so we can dissect all that data in order to obtain our predictions,” says Yam. The resulting predictions — displayed as a visual heat map — help CAA anticipate the severity, frequency, and types of breakdowns that CAA members will experience in a particular geographic area, allowing the organization’s dispatch team to better position its rescue fleet. The result: dramatically reduced wait times (by an average of 15 to 17 minutes) for members in emergency situations.
The brightest minds joined with a shared mission
Behind this impressive technology lies a diverse group of people with backgrounds ranging from aerospace engineering and mathematics to computer science, IT, and business operations. The CCG team behind Gen 2 also includes people with real-world on-the-road and emergency experience — from tow truck drivers to 911 dispatchers.
“This was not just a project from one area,” says Anita Mueller, Vice President of Club and Automotive at CCG. “It was created at different levels from the entire organization, and it was really a blending of talents with a shared vision and a shared understanding of our business drivers.”
CCG’s teams all shared a common goal. “Gen 2 is one of our lifelines to make sure we can be there to rescue our stranded members,” says Mueller.
It’s all about member safety and trust
At the end of the day, CCG’s focus on pushing itself to innovate is all about keeping its members safe. This is one of the key drivers in helping CAA be the most trusted brand in Canada — the organization was recently named the most trusted brand in Canada for the second year in a row in the annual Gustavson Brand Trust Index.
“We are a 118 year old organization, and our roots are built in advocating for the safety of motorists,” says Mueller. “We continue to push ourselves to make sure that we live up to that expectation of keeping our members safe day in and day out.”
