Fleet management involves many functions including maintenance and finance of vehicles, vehicle tracking, and diagnostics, managing fleet drivers, fuel management.
Keeping a track of all the cars, vans, rail, ships, and trucks is an elaborate task. The latest fleet maintenance software just takes away this entire burden from your shoulders.
Working Of Tracking System And Fleet Management
Research by Frost and Sullivan says that you can increase the productivity of your fleet and vehicle utilization by 10 to 15% and 15 to 20% respectively through GPS vehicle tracking.
A company can cut down on its fuel consumption by 20 to 25%, idle time by 20 to 30%, overtime by 10 to 15% and miles driven by 5 to 10%.
So there are a lots of advantages of using a tracking system for fleet management. A tracking system works on GPS that is enhanced by the communication channels.
It links your fleet of connected vehicles to the office to provide detailed data about vehicle tracking.
The tracker neatly puts forth this data online and it becomes much easier for you to see where are the connected vehicles. Such an arrangement contributes towards the competent job management and workflow thereby improving the fuel efficiency.
Linking Of Connected Vehicles & GPS With Tracking System
The link in a tracking system comprises of an integrated GPS receiver that tracks the connected vehicles, a GSM transmitter for broadcasting and coordinating location of a vehicle.
To manage this tracking device, fleet operators log in to the system which is a highly secured application online and monitor the journey of each vehicle.
Depending upon the schedule you have decided, the tracker provides you the update about the location in every minute or within 30 seconds or so. It means that you always have the latest information at hand which facilitates significant operational decisions.
Monitoring Drivers And Their Driving Styles
The tracking solution comes with a g-force sensor for detecting the acceleration as well as abrupt movements including over-steering, over speeding, harsh braking, idling time and current speed.
Monitoring all these activities of a driver gives a fleet manager a good idea about the behaviors of the drivers and also the factors that are pushing up the fuel bills for your company.
Detailed information helps you to take a call on the recruitment and management of your drivers that can otherwise not only affect the budget of your company but can jeopardize credit as well as safety of your team as a whole.
Works Equally Well For All Sizes
The GPS vehicle devices are flexible and easily scalable with the ability to deliver results for all types of fleets irrespective of their sizes.
Even if your company owns 10 or fewer connected vehicles or own thousands of trucks, cars, vans, trailers across the country, a fleet management device is efficient enough to control all the tasks proficiently.
Meeting Environmental Goals
Smart fleet management solutions not only monitor the drivers but also help to cut down on greenhouse emissions so that your company does not fall short on fulfilling the environmental goals made mandatory by most of the governments.
The management service takes help of engine diagnostic tools (OBD), IoT devices, sensors, cloud storage, computing, and GPS so that it gains a competitive advantage through your operations.
Real-Time Tracking Of Connected Vehicles Using GPS
The GPS tracker offers real-time tracking of the connected vehicles with the GPS attached to the adapter placed under the seat of the driver. The tracker keeps on monitoring the performance metrics and updating on the cloud using a high-speed data connection.
Anyone with access to the cloud can check the connected vehicles moving around on a map.
Interestingly, a web app or a mobile keeps you in touch with the real-time updates irrespective of whether you are in a remote location or in the office. Importantly, the arrangement allows not only one but multiple people to access the data if they are provided with the login keys.
The customized mobile apps send notifications and alerts. For example, it is difficult to track whether a driver is hard braking on a large map showing hundreds of vehicles in motion. But an alert immediately directs your attention towards it.
Using Performance Data To Plan Appropriate Routing
The onboard diagnostics provide details about emissions, fuel usage and overall performance of the connected vehicles.
This data can be used for the appropriate routing of connected vehicles.
For example, if vehicles on a particular route are consuming more fuel as compared to other vehicles covering the same distance but on a different route, then it indicates a possibility that the road is not good enough and the route should be avoided.
It will thus help a company save fuel.
Also, it also tells a difference between a decent and a rowdy driver.
Using Tabulated Data To Gain Insight
Apart from asset tracking, and fleet performance details, the tracking system also stores a lot of other data both locally in the cloud storage and the connected vehicles. For a common person without any technical know-how, the data may not make much of a sense.
But a software analyst can use it in a tabulated form to gain some interesting insights about the operation of the fleet. The modern analytics software tabulates the data and shows some interesting facts and figures that explain the decline and the progress of fleet operations in the form of interactive graphs.
Such graphs can let you know about the fuel consumed by the connected vehicles last month vs. this month.
The peak points in the graph will also inform you when exactly the connected vehicles have used most of the fuel and accordingly a fleet operator can find out the reason behind and improvise.
In nutshell tracking a connected vehicle using the latest software helps the companies to:
• Know the exact whereabouts of the vehicle without being physically present on the spot thereby stopping the possibility of any illicit vehicle use.
• Make sure that the company’s transport system is efficient, reliable and cost-effective for meeting the business operations.
• Make sure that the functioning of the company is being carried out in compliance with the rules and regulations of the government.
• Extend the life of the connected vehicles in the fleet and improve their level of productivity while cutting down the cost of maintenance and increasing profits.
So with the fleet management software that keeps a non-stop track of all your connected vehicles 24/7, you can ensure better service to your clients and improve your company’s overall performance.