If you have a fleet of any kind of vehicles on the roads for any reason, there are several ways a GPS vehicle tracking system can increase productivity of both the vehicles and the drivers. Whether you are a customer service manager, a fleet manager or the owner of the company, GPS tracking can help you increase productivity in several areas and show a positive return on your investment in 90 days or less.

You work for a plumbing company and you have noticed that three of the plumbers you have on the road spend far longer on many jobs than the other seven plumbers. But you don’t know why. A GPS vehicle tracking system would tell you that those three plumbers actually do the job in the same amount of time. The difference is that they spend the extra time sitting in the truck with the engine idling. This behavior affects gas mileage, individual job productivity, company customer service productivity, and customer satisfaction (because the customers can see the trucks still sitting outside their homes). The data from your GPS vehicle tracking system will report to you how long the engine is idling, where it is located while idling, and exactly when the engine was turned on and off, as well as how long the vehicle stayed in any single place all day.

A GPS vehicle tracking system can help you improve efficiencies and productivity in several ways, as the account above demonstrates. Here are some additional ways you can expect to improve productivity and efficiency:

- Track and download reports with your GPS vehicle tracking system on the time spent at each location by each driver. Some companies report employee productivity increases of as much as 30%.

- Detect and eliminate excessive engine idling with your GPS vehicle tracking system and improve fuel efficiencies, reduce fuel costs, and reduce fuel consumption.

- Use the monitoring and reports provided by your GPS vehicle tracking system to monitor driving habits of employees and correct bad habits that are dangerous or inefficient. These actions will also help you keep your vehicles on the road longer, reduce maintenance costs, and save fuel and fuel costs.

- Use of a GPS vehicle tracking system to locate and direct or redirect the closest vehicles to customer locations. For any company trying to survive in a competitive environment, high productivity and performance in customer service might be your strongest competitive advantage. Knowing which vehicle is closest to a customer with an immediate need, will reduce response times, increase customer satisfaction, improve customer retention, and improve fuel and driver/employee efficiency and productivity.

- Installing a GPS vehicle tracking system in each vehicle in your fleet will improve your cost efficiency and improve your job productivity. Because a nearly invisible GPS device attached to the OBDII connection in the vehicle makes it possible to receive an immediate alert notification if there is a vehicle theft and because the GPS device allows you to pinpoint the location of the vehicle every second, retrieving the vehicle and apprehending the thief is much more likely. Most insurance companies offer reduced rates on insurance for all vehicles that are part of a GPS vehicle tracking system.

- The geofencing option that is part of a GPS vehicle tracking system allows you to set boundaries for each vehicle. If a vehicle is taken outside that defined area, you receive an instant alert. With this capability you can not only protect your vehicles at night, but you can detect any unauthorized use of company vehicles.

- Your GPS vehicle tracking system will also provide maintenance alerts. This can make a critical difference in both extending the life of the vehicle and preventing costly break-downs. It can also help you detect problems when they are just beginning instead of when they are big repairs that are both expensive to perform and that keep the vehicle off the road for some period of time.

Improving productivity is a critical objective in most companies. Understanding the potential impact of a GPS vehicle tracking system for your company is a very potent argument for making the investment, especially when you will save enough to pay for the entire cost in 90 days or less.

For as little as $300 per vehicle and a small monthly maintenance fee, you can take full advantage of this constantly evolving technology to reduce your company’s operating costs. Here’s how GPS fleet tracking saves your company money.

1. Improve navigation. Your GPS fleet tracking system will be fully integrated with Google maps. This enables drivers to identify the fastest, most direct or most fuel-efficient route to a destination (whether it is within the city or across the country). The navigation function also provides live time reports on traffic conditions along the way, even providing detours around traffic jams. If the weather is bad, you can choose terrain views to see what is ahead. Navigation functionality in your GPS fleet tracking system also allows fleet managers to know precisely where every vehicle is at any time. This makes it easy to identify the closest vehicle to an emergency situation and quickly re-route a vehicle.

2. Monitor and improve driving habits. Because your GPS fleet tracking system compiles data on driver behavior, you can identify drivers who are habitual speeders or who consistently brake hard or who accelerate too fast from a stop. You will have regular reports of every trip taken by every vehicle. You can program the GPS fleet tracking system to alert the driver when the speed limit is exceeded by more than 5 mph and to alert the fleet manager when the speed limit is exceeded by more than 10 mph. You can track exact routes and know which drivers are taking detours or are sitting somewhere with the engine idling for extended periods of time. By monitoring and reviewing this data with your drivers you can improve driving habits and safety.

3. Accident and theft reporting capabilities. If a driver is involved in an accident, the GPS fleet tracking system will provide a complete analysis of the incident with precise data on the speed and direction of the vehicle. This results in accurate and defensible information about the accident for police and insurance companies and makes completing insurance claims faster and easier. In the event of a theft, you will be able to track exactly where the vehicle is at any given moment and this information can be shared with police. You also have the ability to lock doors, disable the starter and cause the horn to start blasting from your central office with your GPS fleet tracking system.

4. Vehicle monitoring and maintenance management. Your GPS fleet tracking system will also have the option for including a maintenance tool. This can interface with the vehicle’s on-board computer to provide notices of times for routine servicing, low tire pressure, evolving engine or system problems or excessive carbon emissions. This enables the fleet manager to either alert the driver of a problem or to bring the vehicle in for service or repairs before there is a complete breakdown requiring emergency action.

Use of these four major capabilities of a GPS fleet tracking system will help your company save money in the following ways:

– Use less fuel and save on fuel costs

– Reduce engine maintenance and operating costs

– Save 5-35% on insurance costs per vehicle

– Eliminate damaging or costly bad driver habits

– Increase productivity and reduce overtime

– Reduce paperwork for drivers, fleet manager and payroll

– Eliminate unauthorized breaks, side trips, or after hours use of vehicles

– Improve customer service and customer satisfaction

In most cases, companies that installed a GPS fleet tracking system recovered the total cost of installation and the first year’s maintenance costs in 3 to 6 months. Some recovered their entire annual cost in just one month. A GPS fleet tracking system is becoming an essential tool of effective and efficient fleet managers throughout the world in all industries, services and businesses. Can you afford to continue spending too much on fuel, insurance, operating costs, employee overtime and employee waste? Isn’t it time you find out how a GPS fleet tracking system can save your company money?