Some Factors To Consider With Vehicle Tracking
Selecting a GPS vehicle tracking system can be a difficult decision for many businesses
, as there are many competing products on the market with a wide range of features. The purpose of this article is to help you decide which features your business should be looking for.
Vehicle tracking is currently one of the fastest growing markets for GPS technology, with businesses of all sizes taking advantage of the benefits that vehicle tracking can deliver, with the ultimate objective of saving the businesses money!
One of the common motivations for using tracking is that companies want to know how fast their drivers have been driving at any particular time of the day. Their objective is to prevent unnecessary fuel consumption, avoid speeding fines, reduce wear and tear on the vehicle and reduce the risk of accidents. Mileage reading is another parameter that can now be accessed remotely. Fuel and employee overtime can be closely monitored and verified by a GPS fleet management system. For example, prolonged idling not only uses unecessary fuel, but it also causes additional wear and tear. By effectively monitoring the data and reports produced by a vehicle tracking system, fuel costs can quite realistically be reduced by over 20 percent.
However, vehicle tracking can also add value and enable you to respond to changing circumstances. For example, if you know where all of your vehicles are, then you can keep customers informed if it appears that a scheduled visit may be running late. So, when evaluating systems and subsequently deciding on how to deploy them, it is worth stepping back and being clear about what information you would like to receive about each of your vehicles and how beneficial it would be to have real-time access, and even whether you might want to send an updated destination directly to the vehicle's satnav unit?
Firstly, it is worth considering whether you need to just log the information for review a day or two later, or is there benefit in being able to locate a vehicle at any time, so that you can make operational decisions according to where your vehicles are.
In terms of the data update frequency, there are two broad categories of systems to choose from: "Real-time" or "Passive". Passive systems rely on you downloading the data from the tracker when the vehicle returns to base. Both have the capability to provide you with vehicle speed data, vehicle stops data, length of stop data and route taken data. For most businesses, it turns out that the benefit of real-time tracking far outweigh the effort required to extract the data from a passive device, so in practice almost all systems installed today are real-time systems.
In terms of other information that is available, the key options to consider include;
1) Monitoring vehicle diagnostics. Diagnostic information is beneficial as it allows you to get early warning of a vehicle problem enabling you to repair small problems before they become larger more expensive problems. Having a precise description of the problem ahead of time can streamline the repair process for technicians. Diagnostic monitoring also allows you to reduce vehicle downtime because the vehicle is better maintained.
2) Geofencing. A geofence is a defined distance away from the vehicle that the vehicle must travel before it activates an alarm. The alarm can be turning on a siren in the vehicle, sending an e-mail alert to the vehicle owner or sending a Short Message Service (SMS) which is a brief text message by cell phone. Fleets use this feature for different reasons. For example, when their drivers travel beyond the boundaries of their usual work area.
3) Exchanging information with a driver. Some GPS fleet tracking systems allow drivers to send and receive data by using an in vehicle display. For example, when a driver has completed a set of deliveries, he could type in a message which would verify the job was done and there were no issues. It is also possible to send a new destination directly to the drivers satnav system so that his schedule can be updated directly.
4) Management reports. Different fleet tracking systems offer different reports. Some examples of the many reports you can set up and use:
* Alerts Report-active and pending diagnostic trouble code and scheduled maintenance alerts.
* After-Hours Report-allows a fleet manager to see if vehicles are being used after business hours.
* Excess Speed Report-speed violations for any or all vehicles in the fleet.
* Stop Detail Report-list the times and duration of stops made by a given vehicle in your fleet.
* Idle Time Report-shows how long a vehicle has spent idling while stationary during a certain time interval.
Overall, provided that you have a good idea of the benefits that you are aiming to achieve from the use of a vehicle tracking system, then you will be able to approach your discussions with potential suppliers with confidence, and be able to help them to identify the he right options for you to consider.
by: Iain Jones
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