Geofences - A Very Useful Feature of Vehicle Tracking

A really useful feature of vehicle tracking is geofences. Geofences can send you an email alert when one of your vehicles enters or exits a geographical zone in real time, so it lets you know straight away! Adding a geofence is easy; click add on the toolbar, then choose the shape you want your Geofence to be (either a rectangle or a polygon). To draw a polygon, just click on the map and start selecting boundary points for the geofence. To draw a rectangle, simply drag the mouse over the area that you want to have a geofence around. Next, you can choose properties of the geofence, like giving it a name, a description and adding the email addresses that you want to have alerts sent to. Finally, you select the vehicles that you want to apply the geofence to, so you'll be notified when one of those vehicles goes in or out of the geofence.

Having a geofence means that you will be alerted when one of your delivery trucks is going to make the delivery to a customer, so you can let your customer know in advance of the delivery being made. Alternately, if you are waiting for a vehicle to make a collection, you will know when it is about to arrive and you can get the packages ready to be loaded onto the truck and delivered to your customers. There are so many other ways that you can use a geofence and it can really benefit your company in saving time and money!

The Focus On Commercial Vehicles

Suppliers of vehicle tracking systems, consistently communicate to their audience the benefits this technology brings and how it can improve productivity and reduce costs. These claims are undoubtedly true and are backed with a wealth of evidence from businesses who have experienced the benefits first hand. Yet, how many of these businesses track non commercial vehicles? 99% of those businesses who have tracking installed will have commercial vehicles; the central focus of vehicle tracking marketing departments.

Focusing on commercial vehicles was clearly the right approach from a marketing perspective. A vast opportunity in itself, these businesses - especially those operating fuel hungry and expensive trucks – have the most compelling return on investment and were the easiest target for tracking suppliers from the late 1990’s onwards. Is this sustainable and where next? There are no definitive statistics on the penetration of vehicle tracking in the B2B market or any other, the industry is too new and fragmented. Penetration of commercials is clearly increasing and is currently estimated at between 20 – 30% so suppliers need to get their strategies in order. There are 2 key ingredients for a long term strategy, investment in product development will help move the industry into new markets and provide killer applications. Secondly, innovative marketing will deliver irresistible ROI to fleets of company cars and communicate in the language of the Sales Manager or Service Manager addressing their own demands and priorities. The only question is how long it takes for the benefits of this technology to be successfully translated?

Vehicle Tracking – How To Reduce Fuel Costs

Vehicle tracking has many virtues which help managers control the cost and improve the efficiency of their remote workforce. These are too vast to explore in a single post so I thought I would kick things off by focusing on how vehicle tracking can help businesses cut their fuel bill, which from my experience, is the most common reason for companies to invest in the technology.

A number of commentators claim that vehicle tracking can save businesses upwards of 14% on their fuel bills, so how does this little black box deliver such savings?

Reducing unauthorised use – Vehicle tracking provides businesses with the visibility of vehicle movements 24/7. So, if a vehicle is supposed to only be used during the working day you can instantly see, in real time (or through historical reporting), whether a vehicle is being used when it should be parked up. This, in my experience is the single biggest contributor to reducing fuel costs, and in some cases businesses have saved thousands through this alone.

Nearest vehicle search – If you are using one of the more sophisticated vehicle tracking systems you will have the ability to instantly search for a specific geographical location for a job, delivery, collection etc, and at the click of a button locate the nearest vehicle to this job. By doing this businesses can reduce the miles there vehicles are traveling and subsequently cut fuel spend.

Improved routing – By selecting a vehicle tracking solution with the ability to replay a vehicles daily activity you can instantly see whether a vehicle has deviated from a planned route or taken an inefficient route. By analysing this information and taking corrective action businesses can reduce wasted fuel.

Prevent driving at excessive speed – I have heard claims that driving at 70 mph uses 30% more fuel than at 50 mph but even if these figures are exaggerated it is excepted that the quicker you drive the more fuel you burn. So, if you’re using a vehicle tracking system with the ability to monitor and report on driving speed you can instantly identify the drivers who speed regularly and through training take corrective action.

If you have any questions please leave a comment and I will get back to you ASAP.