There was a time where the concept of tracking people and bedliner was the preserve of science fiction writers and film makers. Now, Technology and more importantly GPS has grown up enabling vehicle focused businesses to track fleet vehicles with ease, leading to greater management of resources and savings to the business.
Fleet or business vehicle tracking solutions fall into two camps, online (web-based) or locally installed software. Both systems are vulnerable to internet connectivity issues as any system that needs to be connected to the internet is. The advantage of a locally installed system is that you can still use all other features of the software that do not use real-time connections to the internet. A web-based solution would be unusable without a working internet connection.
Both types of systems require a tracking device to be installed in the vehicles that required tracking and adding into the system. Some systems are vehicle tracking systems only, whilst others can track vehicles, peoples or assets.
What can you expect from a good vehicle tracking system?
The obvious place to start would be the interface. This should be simple and intuitive to use and should allow custom configuration to enable you to tailor it to your own industry needs. It is important to remember that many employees in your organisation may need access to the information and should require little or no training to understand the system.
Real-time vehicle tracking is a must so that you can see where a vehicle or asset is located at any time. All good tracking solutions have access to real-time maps that allow you to see the location of a vehicle right down to street level views. Some systems use live traffic information to help prevent costly hold ups to your fleet and customer service issues. This is especially useful if your industry needs to get to clients premises as quickly as possible such as private hire vehicles or field service engineers etc.
Having access to vehicle, driver and route history is essential when considering tracking solutions. Good systems allow fleet managers to see where vehicles have been, where they have stopped and other useful information such as speeding offenses and bad driving behaviour that could affect the economic running of the business. These systems will allow your business to track out of hour’s vehicle usage and some even allow the setting up of zones and alerts to warn if a vehicle is entering an area it shouldn’t be.
Another important requirement is the ability to plan routes to maximise vehicle usage and fuel efficiency. Comparing historical routes to the suggested most economical route will help your business to reduce fuel costs and even vehicle wear and tear.
One of the most useful parts of any business vehicle tracking solution is the ability to produce reports. It is important that reports can be customised to suit your business needs. It can be quite frustrating when you cannot produce the exact report required.
As with any software purchase or subscription, it is very important to look at the type and level of support available to you. Be sure to check any terms and conditions of Service Level Agreements to ensure that they meet your business requirements.