GPS Fleet Vehicle Tracking Provides Solid ROI

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Written by Fleetmatics

Construction Business Owner, July 2009

Global Positioning Systems (GPS) vehicle tracking can give small businesses the control needed to effectively manage off-site vehicle fleets. Monitoring location and speed of vehicles provides an easy way to gauge undesirable driver behavior and increase security.

But fleet owners around the world have begun to recognize that there are benefits of GPS vehicle tracking that directly affect their bottom line. In fact, GPS tracking provides fleet owners with an opportunity to earn a significant return on investment (ROI).

The fact is, if your company is not using a GPS tracking system to monitor your fleet, you are actually losing substantial cash flow every hour your fleet is off site. GPS vehicle tracking can help businesses with fleet vehicles survive and thrive in the competitive marketplace by providing ROI in five ways:

Increasing billable hours
Decreasing overtime hours
Reducing fleet costs
Saving on communication costs
Improving maintenance schedules

Increasing Billable Hours

When employees know that their vehicles are being tracked, they stop wasting time and complete their assigned jobs in a more efficient manner. By increasing the productivity of your employees, you will be able to increase billable hours, complete more jobs and improve customer satisfaction.

In fact, a recent study by Aberdeen Group found that organizations with small fleets experienced a 23 percent increase in the total number of service calls completed per day per technician once GPS vehicle tracking was installed in their fleets.

With GPS installed, drivers will get to each jobsite quickly (which makes customers happy) and complete more jobs per day (which makes you happy). You can even use the information gathered by GPS as a concrete measure of performance to reward exceptional employees.

Bob Bellini, CEO of Varsity Plumbing and Heating in Flushing, NY, sought a tangible way to gain better management control of the company's vehicles, increase operational efficiency and more accurately track billable hours. Installing GPS vehicle tracking in his fleet provided the perfect solution.

"After installing GPS, we saw an immediate ROI," Bellini said. "Through improved productivity and operational efficiencies, we are projecting to add more than $300,000 to our bottom line in our first year."

Decreasing Overtime Hours

Overtime pay can be a huge burden on a small- and medium-sized company. While employees should absolutely be paid for all the hours they work, employers need to be absolutely sure that timesheets reflect actual hours worked.

GPS vehicle tracking gives fleet owners the ability to automatically track all the hours an employee spends in their vehicle and know exactly how long an employee spends at each jobsite.

With this data, you will know exactly how long an employee has worked on any given day, thus eliminating any mistakes made on manual timesheets. And by increasing employee productivity, your business will find that employees will complete more jobs in less time, further reducing overtime hours.

Reducing Fuel Costs

The unpredictability of fuel costs can wreak havoc on a company's bottom line. But even when prices are low, fuel still commands a huge part of a business' budget.

GPS vehicle tracking provides you with a powerful tool that will pinpoint driver habits that waste fuel. GPS systems can often show you which drivers engage in fuel wasting practices including: speeding (a huge source of wasted fuel), excessive idle times, unauthorized journeys and indirect routing to jobsites.

In addition, the best GPS fleet solutions instantly allow you to deploy vehicles closest to a particular jobsite. This helps reduce vehicle mileage, as well as reduce fuel consumption.

Lynda Silvestro, owner of Hoyt Livery in New Canaan, CT, wanted a way to monitor vehicles, reduce gas mileage and eliminate costly personal use of vehicles. Investing in a GPS fleet tracking system provided immediate results. "On fuel savings alone, we are on course to make an annual savings of $73,000 per year from implementing GPS," Silvestro said.

Saving on Communication Costs

Without a GPS solution, the only way to get the location of a fleet vehicle is to make a phone call or send a text message. Repeat calls and messages to multiple drivers can quickly add up to a large communications bill.

Instead of wasting time and money on needless calls, you'll be completing more jobs while reducing your bills.

Improving Maintenance Schedules

Properly maintaining fleet vehicles is important to ensure that each vehicle stays on the road and extends the life of your vehicles. A vehicle in for major repairs costs you money in repair work and lost productivity.

Regular maintenance also has a direct impact on fuel consumption. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, a tuned vehicle can improve its miles per gallon (mpg) rate by an average of 4 percent and immediately fixing a serious mechanical problem can improve mpg by as much as 40 percent.

The best GPS fleet tracking solutions provide service alerts that can tell you when a vehicle is due for routine maintenance and ensure that you keep your vehicles running in top, fuel-efficient form.

By proactively avoiding mechanical troubles and running vehicles at peak efficiency, your business will keep more money in the bank.

Fleetmatics is a provider of GPS vehicle tracking. For more information visit www.fleetmatics.com.

Tags: 2009 July Issue , security , technology