The act of taking a new job or service call and disseminating the necessary information to a field service worker. This is generally done through a cell phone or mobile data terminal.
Many small to mid size service and delivery companies can improve in one or both of these areas. There are many technology options on the market today and understanding your options is important to making a good decision for your company. Not everyone should be using the Mercedes of vehicle tracking and dispatching systems. Investing in a less expensive, less complex, easier to learn system if often the right way to go. Growing businesses are able to grow because they protect cash flow. Investing in to much or to expensive technology can disrupt cash flow and cause major issues in a turbulent economy. In this blog I’m working to help you think through what to consider before making an investment in a GPS vehicle tracking system, a dispatching system or a combination system.
What do I need? What can I afford?
The first obvious question is do you need tracking and dispatching? Many small companies can utilize the GPS tracking system and radios to efficiently dispatch. For $5 you can have an
Dispatchers view showing job status
unlimited text message plan and text information to the driver. As your fleet grows the work flow remains relatively the same but with an increase in volume you either need more people or a way to be more efficient. Dispatching technology can be integrated with your CRM or financial system but you can expect to pay big bucks for this type of solution. Additionally, you can anticipate having ongoing consulting fees and annual maintenance contracts of about 20% of the initial investment. So a $10,000 dispatching application will cost you $2,000 annually to maintain. Some vendors make this a requirement, others make it optional but hammer you with high fees if you need support. Understanding what combination of technology make sense for the maturity of your business is key.
Do you know your ROI?
As with any technology knowing your ROI is extremely important. If you know your ROI is 3-5x the investment in a short period of time you will want to do everything you can to get the best ROI to investment ratio available. Keep in mind the next greatest technology will be out in 6 months so know that making another investment down the road is likely. Many large and small companies invest with little knowledge of their ROI. A good technology partner will help you understand the ROI and demonstrate it in clear term.
How easy is it to learn?
Many systems are very complete and complex. A good system is intuitive and requires basic training to get going. The M3G-2 offers a simple to use interface and requires only 30 minutes of training to get going. Our online training library provides lots of self help videos and screencasts that often replace the need to call technical support. This level of ease of use makes this an ideal fit for small to mid size companies that don’t have a ton of dispatch calls each day. It is clean, simple and easy to read.
At the end of the day you need to know what you must have in a technology to make the investment. Being able to define your Top 3 requirements will help a vendor match the technology to your needs. Be careful when talking to vendors that only have one solution because somehow, strangely enough, their solution will be a fit for your requirements. After you have established you can get what you must have, work on the features you would like to have. This is often a much longer list and at some point the cost of getting the features becomes cost ineffective. Understand what you can get for little or no additional investment.
You need to be realistic when considering the performance of a live GPS tracking system. I’ve spoken to many customers and prospects that believe live tracking means you can see the device update every second, it is 100% accurate 100% of the time, power consumption is not an issue, websites never go down and the accuracy is with two inches. Remember the GPS satellites are about 12,000 miles above the earth [http://www8.garmin.com/aboutGPS/] which leaves a lot of room for error. Even the US military occasionally hits the wrong target. If you add in normal operating issues of sending data across the Internet and cellular networks, you should realize live vehicle tracking is a very good technology but it is not perfect.
Nothing is perfect
The Internet is fraught with issues; some you realize and most you don’t. Think about how many times you’ve sent an email and it has not been delivered at all or in a timely manner. Now think about this being live vehicle tracking data and how it could appear the GPS tracking system is not working when really the problem is a result of high Internet usage during lunch, an issue with your internet service provider (ISP) or an update to your networks security filter. At GPS Fleet Solutions we do have systems that will update once per second (if you are willing to pay the price) so it is technically possible. However, due to various issues between the vehicle and the user data points can actually be delivered out of sequence. That is, sometimes newer data is delivered before older data.
Sometimes there are issues with websites. I’ve seen FedEx® down, Bank of America®, QuickBooks® and websites of many of the largest corporations in America go down. I promise you that the GPS Tracking company you are working with has nowhere near the resources of Bank of America® and BoA still has issues. Internet issues are a fact of life of doing online business. There are distinctive advantages of doing business online instead of using paper and pencil but don’t forget everything involved in making it work.
So what should you expect from a live tracking system? Periodic and random issues that don’t last more than a few minutes to an hour. Customer service that answers the phone and gets any issues to the right people. Scheduled maintenance being done at night and on weekends when user activity is low. GPS track data that has a periodic error of maybe one in 500 GPS points, not 1 in 20 GPS points. Remember that GPS Tracking data is only as good as the equipment, installation and network.
The number one issue with new GPS tracking equipment is the installation. Most systems today have less than a 2% failure rate. Many companies
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believe they can do this themselves since they have mechanics on staff and for less money. Customers can generally do one of the two, but seldom both. Mechanics tend to do things their way which may not be the best way or it may be different between every mechanic. Replacing an alternator is more “issue proof” than installing a GPS Tracking system. An alternator only goes on one way to work and there are limited options to install. Getting one mechanic to take the time to learn the proper GPS Tracking system installation technique is a challenge but doing this with multiple mechanics across multiple locations will a bigger challenge. Companies installing vehicle tracking systems themselves seldom spend the additional money needed to train their people on one standard and how to resolve issues as they come about. All electronics have issues so you can’t forgo troubleshooting steps and procedures. Getting consistency and quality is key to dealing with tampering and driving the return on investment.
#1 Reason for a delayed ROI on an investment in GPS vehicle tracking technology is slow deployment and improper installation.
There are companies that provide professional installation services in one or many markets. www.VehicleInstallers.com is a free online directory of installation companies around the US that do this type of work every day. Other companies like InstallerNet.com tend to outsource to these same companies but charge about 25% for what you can look up on www.VehicleInstallers.com. Additionally, InstallerNet’s fleet team has to travel to every location to do the work. So what happens when there is an issue? Who comes back to correct the problem? Who moves a unit when it is time to replace a vehicle? It’s the guy down the street who is listed on www.VehicleInstallers.com. If you are able to develop a relationship with a local installation contractor your are going to get better service in the long run and have someone that can help you in a lot less time for less money. There are also regional companies with people that live in various markets or frequent those markets. Companies such as Metro Mobile Electronics (www.MME.com), Team TSI (www.teamtsi.com) and others will give you great service at fair market value.
If you decide to do it yourself, click here to read more about things to consider. GPS Fleet Solutions offers weekly training, online videos and screencasts to help you through all these steps. We have installation technicians on staff and a network of trusted GPS Tracking System installation professionals that have proven to provide quality work over time. The above video is just one example how we use technology to make our customers more efficient. This video demonstrates how to create a very secure connection to the vehicles wiring harness using the poke and wrap technique. T-taps and Scotch Locks have issues especially when the wrong size is used for the wire size.
Spring is in the air, finally; for most part of the country. The birds are chirping again, the grass is starting to grow, and people are getting out and enjoying the wonderful weather. If you own a company you know this all too well…time off requests come in by the handful, sick days suddenly get used a lot more often and extended breaks are all on the rise.
If you have employees who are out on the road, unsupervised; lunches get longer, and maybe even little side trips here and there, or just blowing off the rest of the day all together to enjoy that beautiful weather we’ve all been waiting for.
We recently talked to a company who has our GPS tracking system installed in their fleet of tow trucks, about how they liked their GPS Tracking system. She told us they saved $125,000 after installing the system, I had to ask “How did you do that?” she said, “Simple, we did a little spring cleaning” hence the name of this story.
In the tow truck world, drivers are unsupervised most of the time, vehicles are dispatched mostly from the driver’s home on nights and weekends, and with those trucks not being at the shop, and no one monitoring what’s going on, so pretty much anything can be done. Take for example, a tow truck is dispatched to a stranded motorist, when they get there, they talk to the driver, and arrange a price for the vehicle to be towed. Most times this is in cash. The truck takes the car where it needs to go, and collects the money from the driver of the car. Then in the tow truck driver reports back to the office that the car wasn’t there when he got there or it was just a loose cable on the battery and the car was on his way. In the mean time, that $125 or more goes directly in the tow truck driver’s pocket. Needless to say resulting in lots and lots of free money for the driver and lost revenue for the company.
The owner had some suspicions for almost a year, and after about 6 months decided to check into her fears. We installed the units covertly on the driver’s off time when the trucks were at the shop, and then they tracked their use over one weekend. The shop owner could not believe her eyes at the amount of calls and tows they were doing according to the GPS unit. Come Monday morning, the drivers reported back in with their lists and earnings from the weekend. The two didn’t match up. By the GPS calculations each driver should have had over $1000.00 in tow bills. Each only turned in less than $200. When she then pulled them in, along with the sheriff, and showed them where they were stopped, started, and when the bed was down and winch was engaged, as well as the emergency flashing lights, they were fired, then arrested for grand theft. They can’t pinpoint when the stealing had started or how long it had been going on for, but they gained $125k in the year that followed letting go of the two drivers who were robbing them blind.
Now they have new drivers who know about the systems and amazing enough are bringing in the correct amounts each time. Their profits went up immediately and paid for the system in just two days.
Your problem may not be as bad as that, or you may not know you even have a problem.
Maybe it’s time you did some spring cleaning of your own? We can help.
Author, Nikol Hillman – Director of Marketing / Social Media
I recently had to let one of our employees go due to misuse of our company vehicle. I wanted to share our experience for a couple of reasons, most importantly so you can learn how we’ve handled this type of issue internally. Secondly, it is important that our readers and customers know that we practice what we preach. It would not look good if we didn’t track our own vehicles and hold our employees accountable for how they utilized an expensive company asset while try to sell the same technology to fleet operators.
Any good fleet utilization policy begins with a written document. We have a written policy that is published and provided to new employees at the time of employment with other documents. We have taken the next step which is to have a sit down meeting with multiple managers present to eliminate the perception of bias or unclear information. Each driver has signed a copy of the policy and it has been inserted into their vehicle file. This is not a requirement but there is no misunderstanding about driving a company vehicle as our employee did but we used the opportunity to clear up any gray areas we may encounter in the future.
One of the most common discussion points is over maximum speed. In our company we have a max speed of 75 mph (used to be 70). Exceeding this will lead to unpaid days off or termination depending on the severity of the situation. I often hear that at that speed they are getting run off the road or it takes forever to get somewhere. My response is: 1. you’re being paid to drive at the speed we dictate. 2. It is not your car. 3. It is not a constitutional right to drive the posted speed limit or faster. 4. Speed limit says that is the just that, it is a limit, not a milestone.
Here are examples of issues we’ve experienced that are not acceptable under any circumstance.
Idling our vehicle is not necessary to perform the job. This vehicle was idled for over an hour on many occasions.
This vehicle shows after hours driving when the job was completed earlier the previous day. There is nothing good going on when a company vehicle is driven at this time of day. To understand the cost of driving after hours, you have to know your rolling cost per mile.
After hours driving
Considering our policy a maximum speed of 75 MPH, this level of speeding is grounds for termination. What is the real cost of a speeding ticket? What is the real cost of a vehicle accident?
The reality is that if it can happen to a company that sells the technology, you can bet it is happening to your company. I can’t tell you how many times over the year’s fleet operators have told me they don’t have these issues or they trust their drivers, yet they are calling us. If they don’t have issues, why are you calling? The reality is, ALL fleet operators have these issues, even if your family is driving your vehicles. The question is how much will you tolerate? How much money are you willing to forgo so someone can use your company vehicle for personal use? We all make choices in business and sometimes we prosper and sometimes we lose.
This is not a normal post but if you are interested in this technology this is a good video to watch. I made it outside my home with a hand held digital camera but it turned out pretty well. If you are familiar with GPS tracking you will appreciate how well the PT-2 works in locations that would have never worked in the past. Read more about the PT-2.
This is a freight train coming down the tracks with a major impact on trucking. If you have a trucking company and are not up to date on this, you could be out of business if and when it goes into effect. Click here to read all the details. This program appears to be providing a national database for driver performance scoring. With this information available to insurance carriers, companies, licensing bureaus and others, there is no telling how the data will be used. Will it increase insurance costs? Will it reduce the pool of “qualified” drivers? Will it save lives? Will it reduce accident claims? Will it improve service? Who knows? The one thing I’m confident of is that when the government becomes the watch dog, things get expensive and very rarely a whole lot better. There are drivers that are going to need a new line of work when this is implemented.
What is it?
Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010, CSA 2010, is a Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) initiative to improve large truck and bus safety and ultimately reduce commercial motor vehicle (CMV)-related crashes, injuries and fatalities. It introduces a new enforcement and compliance model that allows FMCSA and its State partners to contact a larger number of carriers earlier in order to address safety problems before crashes occur. When the program is fully rolled out by the end of 2010, FMCSA will have a new nationwide system for making the roads safer for motor carriers and the public alike!
In the development of the CSA 2010 program, FMCSA sought to incorporate several key attributes.
FLEXIBILITY – Adapt to Changing Environment. Accommodates changes to the transportation environment, such as evolutions in technology and changing programmatic responsibilities.
EFFICIENCY – Maximize Use of Resources. Improves Federal and State enforcement staff productivity, as well as the safety performance of members of the motor carrier community.
EFFECTIVENESS – Improve Safety Performance. . Identifies behaviors associated with safety risk; focuses compliance, enforcement, and remediation efforts on those unsafe behaviors.
INNOVATION – Leverage Data and Technology. Improves safety through the innovative use of technology to track and update safety performance data.
EQUITABILITY – Be Fair and Unbiased. Assesses and evaluates motor carrier safety and enforces Federal laws and safety regulations to ensure consistent treatment of similarly situated members of the motor carrier community.
The concept of combining these things is attractive to many small business owners. The trio provides a quick and effective way to improve fleet operations. The days of simply tracking a truck is quickly dwindling as technologies merge to provide value added services and efficiencies. Lets do a quick overview of some of the benefits each component brings to a fleet operator. The benefits are generally applicable to any fleet operation but I have noticed some fleet owners like to claim they don’t. Those that are not going to realize the benefit of the technology are probably not tech savvy enough to be reading this blog anyway. They are likely still using a regular phone instead of a PDA, using paper logs instead of spreadsheets and changing the oil when the exhaust is dark gray instead of monitoring the miles driven. If you want more ideas on fleet operations listen to our podcast “Fleetistics“ on iTunes, view our Fleetistics YouTube channel, subscribe to our newsletter or register for our training library (customers only). We are constantly working to bring our customers more on all areas of fleet operations without it being a sales pitch…all the time.
Dispatchers map view
First, let’s review GPS tracking since this is our core business and where I have 10 years of experience watching fleet operators bust their ass to make a living. If you don’t believe me or want to read more click here to read what customers have said over the years. In my opinion GPS tracking provides the foundation of fleet operations through accountability. You have to know your drivers are executing the plan before you can start to make improvements in other areas. Life is about being accountable to yourself, family, company and your God. Being accountable to the company also means being accountable to the people in it and their families. GPS tracking also provides insight on routes traveled. With efficient routes come many benefits including on-time customer service, lower fuel expenses, more production and a lower cost per running mile. GPS tracking impacts so many areas of a business that it is hard to understand until you see the data.
Dispatchers view showing job status
Dispatching is the function of getting the work communicated to a field service worker in a consistent and reliable manner. With the Marcus or M3G-2 system this means locating a customer in the v8 user interface, finding the nearest vehicle and sending the job to the driver. How quickly this process takes place is important to being able to handle a large volume of incoming work. Dispatching also requires the communication of the status of the present job so the dispatcher can determine who should get the next service call not only based on location but on availability. With the Marcus GPS system, an address is transmitted to the in vehicle Garmin device that posts the job to the inbox where a field tech can then accept or reject the job. If the job is accepted the navigation component will take over and direct the field tech to the next stop.
The last part of the trio is messaging. If you have been in business more than a year you understand business is about people. People are not
Message interface for drive
perfect, predicable, or mechanical. Because people are people, we need to communicate thoughts ideas and intentions. How we do this impacts how our dispatching efficiency. The days of having to call 4-8 drivers to see where they are and who is “available” are over. Have you ever noticed how no one is “available” late on a Friday or how their current job has run over? Messaging provides a cost effective method of communication. It is also safer than calling someone that is driving and trying to write down an address. Simple messaging to a Garmin device to allow for free form texting allows participants to fill in the communication blanks that would be present if only the address was sent to the field tech. Field workers need details on the job so they can plan effectively to have the time and materials needed to get the job done.
Whether you manage a large or small fleet the challenges are often the same as a percentage of your expenses, issues or opportunities. Knowing what to buy, when and from whom, will set your company apart. Good luck out there, business is daily fight in the urban jungles of America.
If you are a business owner and want to track your fleet do yourself a favor and do it right or don’t do it at all. I’ve been doing this a long time and cannot remember one customer I’ve encountered that has been happy with cell phone tracking in a business application. I suspect I’ll generate some hate mail from this but I’m telling you based on my personal experience over ten years. The adage that if it is too good to be true, it probably is. Read more. Cheap cell phone tracking has to be available because shortcuts are being made in some aspect of what is delivered to the end user. In sales 101, low prices are used to offset shortfalls in features and services. Why would a cell phone tracker be any different.
There are many reasons why you should not do this. Even if you don’t buy a GPS tracking system from GPS Fleet Solutions, don’t get a cell phone tracking system. If you want to go it on your own, at least be smart enough not to sign a contract or have a way to end the service should it not be what is needed.
Here is a list of reasons I say avoid cell phone tracking system (mostly from Sprint).
1. Low prices don’t mean anything if you are not getting what is needed to run your business and drive down costs. $15 a month is too much if you are getting $0 value. Take the cost of a real fleet tracking system [$27] and subtract the cost of a phone tracking solution [$15] and this is really what you are making a decision on. Is the price difference of $12 worth the advantages provided by a black box tracking solution?
2. GPS tracking on a cell phone is very power intensive. If you need to talk a lot on the phone and use the GPS, you can count on the phone needing to be on the charger at all times. Once employees figure out they can let their phone die or use this as a temporary excuse, you suddenly have phones dieing when it is convenient. The trouble is you can’t tell so you have to put up with it.
3. Phones don’t have to be with the driver. A driver can leave the phone at the job or at home and continue to abuse your vehicle. Could they leave your vehicle at the job and catch a ride with a friend, certainly but it is far less likely. At least they would not be using your vehicle to do their business.
4. Phones carry a hidden costs when you get the bill. Cell phone bills carry 20% fees and taxes that have to be added to the overall expense. This means a $20 fee is really a $22 expense to you. GPS tracking systems are not taxed or have these fees.
5. Phone companies are not fleet tracking companies. Taking someone that sells you cell phones and expecting them to be proficient in understanding your fleet tracking needs is a pretty good leap of faith. Cell phone companies cannot be all things to all people. Your company is much better off working with someone that has the expertise to drive your ROI because they understand your fleet issues. I would not even consider selling cell phones because it is not what we do.
6. The user interface is pretty limited for the systems I’ve seen. The mapping is generally a proprietary map that they buy to save money. GPS fleet tracking providers typically use Google or Bing maps which costs money every time you display a map view. This revenue drives them to compete for your business by providing frequent map updates and cool features such as Street View. Proprietary maps used by cell phone tracking companies are a one time purchased and may only be updated every few years because they are very expensive to purchase. The problem with these maps is that they don’t give you the most current mapping data available or the cool features that help you make good decisions.
7. It is very easy to tamper with a cell phone since the driver is holding it. A driver can put the phone in a metal lunch box or do other things to obstruct the reception of the GPS signals. Additionally, GPS signals are directional so the position of the phone has a big impact on the accuracy of the GPS track data.
If I’ve not said enough to make you nervous and make you think twice, you deserve to get roped into a 48 month cell phone tracking contract. $15 monthly fees is $15 wasted if you can’t make better decision, dispatch efficiently, improve customer service and drive decision making with good GPS data. Do yourself a favor and don’t sign up for more than a trial. Then take the unit and try to beat the system yourself. Then give it to your worst employee for two weeks and think about this article. It will quickly become clear if this is the right technology for your company.
