Vehicle Tracking Devices Improve Business Awareness
Corporations use vehicle tracking devices to manage logistics in meeting customer expectations, assigning drivers and repair personnel to meet the next priorities, and reducing costs associated with fleet management.
These devices can be used for real time data gathering or for later data analysis. They vary widely in cost from a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars. As one might imagine, feature and functionality go along with the pricing.
There are many uses for vehicle tracking devices. Their history goes back to the U.S. Government’s use for locating a wide variety of means of transportation. There is a network of 26 satellites that are used to triangulate with the hundreds of thousands of global positioning systems (GPS) devices in use in the government, commercial and consumer market segments. Today their uses include a range of activities from personal navigation assistance to corporate fleet management programs.
For many years, corporations have provided a fleet of vehicles for employees who needed to drive around a territory for sales and service. The motivation was to help minimize employee personal expense of doing the driving required to reach and service the client base. At the same time, the cost of providing vehicles for “regular drivers” was less than paying the government recommended mileage allowance rate. Over time, the “benefit” became one that was subject to abuse and many more miles were put on the vehicles than was required to cover the territory. As a result, costs began to escalate without an apparent solution to controlling them.
The developments in GPS technology and computer software bring the capabilities of vehicle tracking devices to bear to help management gain a better understanding of the movement of their fleet and some of the environmental realities of each vehicle providing the ability to better control expenses related to the fleet. Vehicle tracking devices have become proven tools to improve fleet efficiencies, customer satisfaction, and the contribution of the fleet to the bottom line.
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