A short read on the business case behind a free product, from our CEO Anthony La Malfa.
The question I get asked most often, usually about ninety seconds into a demo, is some version of: what's the catch? It is a fair question. Nobody in this industry gives software away, and an operator who has been burned by a “free” trial that turned into a per-truck invoice is right to be suspicious.
The actual business case
Netcorp has been an Australian telematics company for twenty-five years. The EWD is one product on a platform we already run, staff and certify for other reasons. The marginal cost of adding one more driver to it is small — small enough that charging for it would earn less than the goodwill of not charging.
Some of the operators who come for the free diary eventually want the rest: tracking, maintenance, the full telematics stack. Most never will, and that is fine. The maths still works.
Why fatigue management specifically
Fatigue management shouldn't have a price tag. A written work diary is cheap and a compliant electronic one costs a small operator real money every month, which means the operators with the thinnest margins — often the ones under the most schedule pressure — are the last to get the better tool.
That is a bad outcome for a safety system. Removing the price removes the reason to delay.
What free does not mean
It does not mean a trial. It does not mean advertising. And it does not mean we are selling the data — fatigue records are never sold or shared for commercial purposes, which is written into our privacy policy and not something we can quietly change later.
It also does not mean cut corners. The EWD went through the same NHVR approval process as every other approved provider, and it is covered by the same ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certifications as the rest of the business.