Fleet management companies do not always recognize the benefits of a vehicle tracking system, and often mistakenly consider GPS vehicle tracking technology to be an expensive toy, not relevant to their business, or too complicated to understand. .
During times of severe economic downturn, the pressing priorities of keeping costs down and maintaining liquidity can impact the equally vital need for fleet managers to maintain a high level of service to their customers.
The rising cost of fuel, always an ongoing concern for any fleet operating organization, has become a critical issue and many companies have been forced to recognize the key element of fuel savings that the adoption of on-time vehicle tracking can contribute to a company’s balance sheet.
The benefits of commercial vehicle tracking can be shown to directly impact a business’ bottom line, giving fleet owners the opportunity to realize a significant return on investment (ROI) by addressing the issues of losing off-site fleets. a substantial cash flow per hour.
In addition, quality consulting diagnostics can prescribe custom value-added components, total vehicle management, and bespoke mobile worker solutions.
Implementation of mobile workforce tracking can be vital to the strategic imperative of maintaining a competitive advantage in increasingly challenging economies and markets. There are five main savings, ROI benefits of vehicle fleet tracking:
· Reduction of fleet costs – Fuel represents a large part of a company’s budget, and the unpredictability of fuel costs can wreak havoc on a company’s bottom line. Vehicle tracking provides a powerful tool that identifies drivers’ fuel-wasting habits, including: speeding, excessive idling, unauthorized travel, and indirect routes to workplaces. Deploying vehicles closer to a particular job site also helps reduce vehicle mileage, as well as reduce fuel. consumption.
· Communication Cost savings – repeating mobile calls and text messages to multiple drivers can quickly add up to a large communications bill. With a mobile workforce solution like GPS tracking, fleet owners know the location of each vehicle and can determine which vehicles are closest to any job site for rapid deployment. Reducing time and money wasted on unnecessary calls means completing more work and lower bills.
· Increase in billable hours – Driver awareness of mobile workforce tracking has a dramatic effect in encouraging completion of assigned jobs in a more efficient manner. Increased driver productivity means increased billable hours, more jobs completed and improved customer satisfaction. The use of data collected by GPS is key to measuring performance.
· Reduction of overtime – Overtime pay can be a huge burden on an SME’s fleet operation. GPS vehicle tracking ensures timesheets reflect actual hours worked. By providing fleet owners with the ability to automatically track all the hours an employee spends in their vehicle and know exactly how much time an employee spends at each job site, errors made in manual timesheets are eliminated. .
· Improvement of maintenance programs – Proper fleet vehicle maintenance is important to ensure each vehicle stays on the road and extends the life of the vehicle. Regular maintenance also has a direct impact on fuel consumption.
The best vehicle tracking systems provide service alerts when a vehicle needs routine maintenance. Proactively avoiding mechanical issues and running vehicles at peak efficiency is another significant ROI savings.