GPS Tracking

Are the employees of your business resisting the adoption of GPS tracking technology for fleet management, out of fear that their every move would be monitored?

This common reservation can be put aside if your management can demonstrate that a vehicle tracking system will benefit the company and its mobile workforce equally. And the goal should be communicated from the day the program is incorporated into the business plan.

To help convince your drivers that GPS tracking will help them, make a list of the proven, positive results. Success stories can easily be found on the Internet, where companies are eager to share their “discoveries,” with real results documented in dollars and cents. Within months of instituting a GPS tracking system for fleet management, your company will realize, and can boast of, its own results.

Here are seven ways a GPS tracking system will help drivers who are participating in a fleet management program:

1. Security. During incidents involving mechanical breakdown of fleet vehicles or stolen property, someone at headquarters can check the vehicle tracking system and will know where the company’s mobile assets are immediately.
2. Reduced paperwork. Forgo the pen-and-paper time sheets, logging of mileage, time spent on each call and recording the addresses of each and every stop. GPS tracking keeps a permanent, accurate record.
3. Improved communication and response times. When a driver needs backup – an extra hand, a parts delivery, or a specialty tradesman – dispatch can find and direct the closest responder. A real-time GSP tracking system depicts the location, speed and direction of each vehicle, live, on the same digital map.
4. Happy customers. Estimated arrival times (delivery “windows”) are a thing of the past with GPS tracking. GPS tracking adds flexibility to a fleet management schedule. Traffic managers can contact customers and inform them exactly when the driver will arrive.
5. Proof of driving skills. To the general public and often law enforcement, one company vehicle looks the same as the next. GPS tracking establishes identity by recording a vehicle’s exact location and speed at every sampling point. Dispute speeding tickets, accident reports and parking fines.
6. Undisputed job performance. For each “bad apple” driver a GPS-based fleet management system might uncover, there will be two or more employees showing stellar performance. Good things happen to conscientious, team workers.
7. Efficient route planning. Drivers in a fleet management program will learn how to get to a customer quicker by avoiding road construction, traffic jams and overlapping trips. GPS tracking systems – both passive GPS tracking and real-time GPS tracking – archive each vehicle’s daily travels. Compare one day to the next with special attention to time of day, speed and distance traveled and make common-sense schedule changes. Why send a driver through the same traffic nightmare day after day? Play it smart with fleet management. Plan alternative routes or bump up a delivery by an hour and save 20 minutes driving time. A recent study revealed that some motorists cut their commute times on declared school holidays by as much as 50 percent.

In today’s business world, a proper fleet management plan should certainly include a GPS-based vehicle tracking system. The result will be a win-win for both companies and employees.

A tight ship is not apt to sink. All aboard should be grateful for that.

Source: Materials Handling World Magazine

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Tags: Business, drivers, employee, Fleet Management, Fleet Tracking, GPS Tracking

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 15th, 2010 at 4:27 pm and is filed under All Articles, GPS Fleet Tracking, GPS Tracking, Vehicle Tracking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.