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4 minute read
Having visibility on all the vehicles in your fleet at once can be a challenge, especially if a diverse range of units supports your company's needs. Choosing the right fleet tracking solution can change your entire operation in the best way possible. Investing in a GPS tracking system can increase fleet output, boost safety levels, encourage more accurate deliveries, and improve customer experiences.
We'll help you understand how to choose the best fleet tracking solution for your business that provides detailed insights into your company’s daily operations.
What is Fleet Tracking Technology?
Fleet tracking technology is a form of satellite technology that can follow your fleet of trucks, at any location. Most GPS tracking devices are linked to a portal or web-based interface that a company can use to keep track of the locations of individual vehicles in their fleet.
Fleet tracking technology often gets shared or sent to the back-office team and safety managers. The system provides them with on-screen information and coordinates to a web interface for precise and reliable location data.
Benefits of Vehicle Tracking for Fleets
The benefits of tracking for fleets are astronomical in comparison to making phone calls and guessing your fleet's daily activities. Several advantages of fleet tracking include:
- Cuts Costs: No matter your industry, it’s important to look at your business as a whole and determine where you can cut costs and invest in new resources. GPS fleet tracking technology can help allocate your money and resources in a way that maximizes your bottom line. It can also help you implement route optimization to reduce fuel costs, unnecessary mileage, and vehicle wear. Having a fleet that’s well-maintained and available can upsurge productivity and level out your resource usage.
- Increases Safety: GPS fleet vehicle tracking solutions also record driving incidents, maintenance information, and vehicle diagnostics, which can help you understand each driver’s skill level. Depending on their habits and number of incidents, further safety training may be necessary. You can use tracking technology as a driver improvement strategy to increase safety.
- Provides Real-Time Locations: Real-time locations and arrivals benefit you in keeping track of and increasing your operation’s efficiency levels, and they can also increase customer satisfaction. Instead of waiting for deliveries, your clients will know when to expect your arrival. Knowing where all your vehicles are at all times allows you to take a proactive approach to various situations, which saves you time and money.
- Enables Better Route Planning: With an advanced fleet tracking portal, you can pre-plan routes for your vehicles. Route planning software can take into account the shortest distance, truck dimensions, trailer type, and hazmat dimensions to create the best route possible for all your vehicles. Whether you want to tailor routes to vehicle types, optimize route distances, or review historical data to pinpoint areas to improve, a fleet tracking portal gives you the tools to do it.
- Streamlines Communications: When you outfit your vehicles with vehicle tracking devices that you've paired with your account, you can streamline communications between administrators and drivers. For example, your drivers can use fleet tracking software to log information and set their status, with this information uploaded to the cloud. Your administrators can review it, ensuring no one on your team is being left in the dark.
How to Choose the Best Tracking Solution for Your Fleet
Knowing how to choose a tracking solution for your fleet begins with establishing a set of goals. What metrics do you want to track? Consider the average route distance, fuel, and speeding incidents to start. What key areas will benefit your operations most?
1. Research and Try Options
Next, you will want to conduct research on which company delivers exceptional tracking technology with various features and has great customer support from beginning to end. Partner with a company like Rand McNally that will jump into the specifics with you and understand what you want to accomplish. Look for a tracking system with innovation and usability, plus a solution that can be tailored to your company’s exact needs.
It’s also smart to request a demo of the GPS fleet tracking technology before investing. Things that should be demonstrated include reports, alerts, dashboards, and live maps. A demonstration or trial period can give you a strong idea of how the system works as well as how trustworthy and reliable the provider is.
2. Assess Features with Key Peoples' Input
Once you know how the system can support the goals and the bottom line of the company, collaborate with your other managers and supervisors to ensure a smooth process. This can help with a seamless transition when talking with your crew members. Talk about safety, customer service, and other elements that will directly impact the drivers.
Understanding how to choose a fleet tracking solution also comes down to the available features, the size of your fleet, and the projected growth of your company. No matter the size of your fleet, a smooth onboarding process is essential.
You will want a solution that gives you maximum visibility into your daily and overall fleet operations. When you add any new form of technology to your company that truckers and in-office personnel need to understand, a simple and cost-effective process is key. Work with a company that thrives on smooth onboarding processes to ensure your fleet gets back on the road with minimal delays.
3. Consider Immediate and Long-Term Ease of Use
You may want to consider investing in a tracking solution that has intuitive data filtering as a feature. This will grant certain people access to particular files of information. Filtering provides the right information to the right people without everyone searching through an endless amount of data. Having role-based access can keep the pace of your business at a steady flow with limited interruptions.
In many cases, you will want to consider integrating your existing internal systems with the benefits of fleet tracking, such as fuel consumption, payroll, and inventory data, which will enable complete fleet visibility.
4. Choose a Company to Partner With
As you’re coming to a final decision, partner with a company that offers full warranties on its products, like Rand McNally Fleet. You can feel assured that the tracking technology will protect your fleet. From there, schedule an installation appointment for all or most of your vehicles and begin coaching your team.
Why Choose Rand McNally Tracking Solutions?
Rand McNally can assist your operations by providing vehicle tracking solutions for your fleet's needs. Our fleet management platform can support any high-value vehicle to give you peace of mind at an affordable price.
We provide tracking systems designed to keep your customers satisfied by ensuring your drivers and vehicles are performing at their best. With our tracking devices installed in your vehicles, you'll have access to a vehicle's idle time, fuel consumption, speeding time, and hard braking stats. You can also use our fleet tracking devices and platform to identify the location of your vehicles at all times. Our solutions also support the shaping of your company into a more cost-effective, productive, and safe operation.
At Rand McNally, our fleet trackers deliver the following:
- Affordability
- Consistency
- Durability
- Easy installation
- Prevention
We are here to simplify your business, so we install, connect, track, and improve your operations. The installation process for our Electronic Logging Devices is smooth, and you simply log into the driver application to view where the vehicle is located. You will be able to access accurate information and data to stay on top of your multifaceted list of company goals.
Partner with Us Today
Rand McNally provides complete fleet management solutions, such as tracking, monitoring, and compliance, to help increase your business’s productivity via analytics. When you install our fleet tracking solutions, you can easily and accurately track the progress of your business while increasing safe and efficient driving.
