In this exclusive IoT Business News Q&A, Digital Matter CEO Loïc Barancourt outlines how ultra-efficient, long-life tracking technologies are rewriting the rules of supply-chain visibility. He explains why long-standing tradeoffs between data quality and battery life are finally being overcome—and what that shift enables for large-scale deployments worldwide.
Battery Life vs. Data Quality
The supply chain world has long struggled with the tradeoff between battery life and data quality. Why has that been such a difficult problem to solve, and how is Digital Matter approaching it differently?
This tradeoff has been one of the biggest challenges in IoT tracking because battery life and data quality are so closely connected. Every GPS fix, sensor read, and transmission consumes power. If you report too frequently, you drain the battery quickly; if you report too little, you create blind spots. For years, companies have had to choose between richer data or long-term viability.
At Digital Matter, we see it as a balance problem rather than a technology limitation. A truly connected supply chain isn’t just about trucks or vehicles – it’s about linking the physical assets themselves to the digital control tower. That includes the millions of returnable containers, roll cages, pallets, and kegs that move goods daily and are built to last five to ten years. Keeping those assets connected for their entire lifespan requires hardware and firmware that are both efficient and durable.
That’s the foundation of our “deploy once” philosophy. Across more than 1,500 active partners and thousands of end customers, including Fortune 500 enterprises, we’ve engineered devices that maximize performance without compromising longevity, from component selection to how data is managed when a unit goes out of coverage. The engineering behind it is complex, but the outcome is simple: long-life devices that just work.
Crucially, achieving the right balance doesn’t mean sacrificing visibility. In most cases, three to four well-timed pings per day provide all the operational insight needed. Companies that chase constant real-time data often end up with devices that last months instead of years – in turn killing operational ROI.
Our adaptive tracking technology adjusts reporting based on movement, while our Energy Saving Stack pushes efficiency even further through software enhancements rather than new hardware. Combined with cloud-based location solving and low-power connectivity like LTE-M, NB-IoT, and Cat 1bis, we’ve reached a point where battery life no longer limits what’s possible.
For the first time, organizations can have both: rich, high-quality data and multi-year performance at global scale. It’s an exciting shift; one that’s turning connected tracking from a technical challenge into a true enabler of long-term intelligent supply chain visibility.
Event-Driven Reporting
You’ve mentioned that event-driven reporting can make data collection more efficient. Can you explain what that looks like in practice and why it matters?
Event-driven reporting means a device sends data when something relevant happens – for instance, when it moves, experiences an impact, or crosses a geofence, instead of only transmitting on a fixed schedule. In practice, most deployments need a mix of both approaches. Devices can send updates at regular intervals for baseline visibility and then automatically increase reporting when certain conditions are met.
That flexibility is important because every use case is different. A pool of returnable containers might only need updates when assets leave or arrive at a site, while high-value equipment in transit could require more frequent location checks. All of these settings are configurable, allowing users to define which events matter most and how often data should be reported.
This kind of context-aware logic – what we think of as using “smarter signals” – ensures each transmission serves a purpose. It reduces unnecessary data traffic to conserve battery life and bandwidth, and delivers the right information at the right time.
Smarter Signals
When you talk about “smarter signals,” what exactly does that mean? How do these smarter approaches help strike the right balance between visibility and battery life?
“Smarter signals” refers to the adaptive intelligence built into Digital Matter’s tracking devices, enabling them to sense their environment and respond dynamically, rather than operate on fixed reporting schedules.
Instead of continuously transmitting data, each device uses onboard intelligence to determine when and how to communicate based on real-world activity. For example, it may send frequent updates when a trailer is in motion, then switch to occasional “health checks” when stationary. The same principle applies to environmental monitoring, transmitting only when a key threshold, such as temperature or water level, changes.
This adaptive signaling reduces unnecessary transmissions and power use while still delivering accurate, meaningful data. Ultimately, smarter signaling is about making every transmission count, providing timely and relevant information that keeps operations visible, devices running longer, and decisions better informed.
Aligning Lifespans
You’ve highlighted the idea of aligning tracker lifespan with asset lifespan. Why is that alignment so important for scaling IoT tracking?
Aligning the lifespan of a tracker with the lifespan of the asset it monitors eliminates one of IoT’s biggest hidden costs: maintenance. When a tracker’s battery gives out long before the asset’s useful life ends, it leads to replacements, manual servicing, and downtime that quickly erode ROI, especially when you’re managing thousands of devices at scale.
Today, with trackers capable of lasting ten to even twenty years, battery life has largely stopped being the limiting factor. That longevity makes it possible to maintain continuous visibility for assets that stay in circulation for years, from returnable packaging to industrial equipment.
At that point, the challenge shifts from power to connectivity. Over a ten- or twenty-year deployment, networks evolve and sunset, making multi-network flexibility just as important as hardware durability. When both are designed to endure, large-scale, long-term IoT tracking becomes not only viable, but truly sustainable.
New Use Cases
What kinds of new use cases are becoming possible now that trackers can last as long as the assets they’re monitoring?
Extending device lifespans has completely changed what’s feasible in IoT tracking. When batteries can operate for ten or even twenty years, the economics finally support monitoring assets that were once considered too low-value or too hard to reach.
That’s opening new opportunities across returnable and reusable infrastructure – the bins, kegs, pallets, and carriers that keep goods moving. In food logistics, for example, trackers can follow bins transporting millions of kilograms of poultry each week. In beverage or automotive supply chains, they can stay with beer kegs or unit-load carriers through countless reuse cycles without ever needing replacement.
This longevity means operators can deploy once and maintain visibility for the entire lifespan of the asset. It also shifts the challenge from power to connectivity: ensuring that as networks evolve or sunset over a decade or more, devices can adapt and keep communicating. That’s what makes true large-scale long-term visibility possible.
Tracking Non-Powered Assets
Many non-powered assets like pallets, bins, or containers have historically been tough to track. How are newer IoT designs changing that reality?
Over the past decade, there’s been tremendous progress in connecting non-powered assets thanks to new low-power network technologies like LTE-M, NB-IoT, Sigfox, and LoRaWAN. These advances, combined with more energy-efficient device designs, have made it possible to track assets that move through complex global supply chains without relying on external power.
Now, with continued innovation in energy optimization – including more efficient chipsets and improvements within our Energy Saving Stack – we can even achieve long battery life using traditional 4G technology such as Cat 1bis. That’s an important step, because it allows for lower-cost, truly global deployments without relying solely on emerging low-power networks.
These advances mean that battery-powered trackers can operate for years on the same proven 4G infrastructure already deployed in 100+ countries and shared with mobile phones. It makes long-term visibility viable for assets like pallets, bins, and containers that were once too difficult or costly to monitor, and does so with far lower risk and far wider adoption, including in emerging economies.
Operational Benefits
Once organizations start connecting more of their assets, what kinds of operational benefits are they seeing?
We’re seeing benefits across the board, from reducing losses and improving utilization to streamlining day-to-day operations. Real-time visibility helps prevent theft, delays, and compliance issues, but the real transformation comes from how organizations are now using that data.
As more enterprises connect their assets, they’re moving toward what we call AI-native operations. Instead of relying solely on dashboards or reports from SaaS providers, they’re ingesting trusted tracking data directly into their own AI-powered systems for analysis and visualization. That gives them a single, unified view – a true “pane of glass” – across their global operations.
In that context, Digital Matter’s role is to provide the accurate high-quality data layer those AI tools depend on. When organizations can trust their data at the source, it becomes far easier to make predictive, data-driven decisions that improve efficiency and resilience at scale.
The Future of Asset Tracking
Stepping back a bit, how do you see these innovations changing the way companies think about asset tracking as a whole?
Asset tracking is shifting from simply knowing where something is to understanding how it’s performing and how it can be optimized. It’s no longer just a visibility tool; it’s becoming a source of operational intelligence.
As organizations move toward AI-native operations, tracking data is being integrated directly into their own AI systems for analysis and decision-making. That changes the value proposition entirely: the focus moves from producing dashboards to generating high-quality, trusted data that drives automation and continuous improvement.
We’re seeing this evolution take shape globally, across industries and asset types. With devices now deployed in more than 130 countries, Digital Matter’s role is to help ensure the data coming from the field is accurate, consistent, and useful, so that organizations can make better and faster decisions.
In that sense, asset tracking is evolving into a strategic capability; one that helps businesses operate more efficiently, predict issues before they occur, and build more resilient, data-driven supply chains.
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