05/13/2005

For any business owner, asset management can be the key to success. Keeping track of inventory and office supplies are types of asset management going back to the beginnings of ledger books. Now with the turn of the century, GPS technology coupled with computer driven management software is the next new wave of asset tracking for businesses that employ the use of fleets of vehicles to service metropolitan and national areas

As a fleet operator, think for a moment about the costs involved with running and maintaining your fleet. At the top of the list is employee salaries and wages. Once your employee leaves your yard with your vehicle, it is up to him or her to report their time on the job to you when they return. If only 30 minutes a day is time spent doing something other than the job you sent them out to do, but their time card at the end of the week doesn't reflect any personal time the employee might have spent during the week, a business owner can save about $80.00 per week on wages. Asset management isn't just about keeping track of your merchandise, it's about keeping track of your billable hours. Having a GPS system with GPS software can easily relieve your weekly payrolls of unsubstantiated overtime hours, but it also increases your ability to bill your customer correctly. If a customer calls and complains about their bill, claiming your technician was only on site for one hour instead of two, a quick check of the GPS software logs can verify the time your tech spent on site.

I recently had a new customer tell me that after just two weeks of having the G4 UpLink asset management system deployed throughout his fleet, that his weekend overtime hours dropped from an average of 6.5 hours over a weekend to just an half hour. He found out right away that he had been paying time and a half hourly wages to employees who were not actually doing much work at all. Another customer called one day to say one of his units would stop working every day between the hours of 1pm and 3pm. A quick check of the location the next afternoon and he found not one, but five of his vans sitting outside a local strip club.

Most employees are good people and respectful, but in any fleet a GPS asset management system can help a business owner find ways to improve the companies efficiency and in turn help raise the bottom line. Other ways to start saving money on your fleet include savings on gas every week and reductions in insurance bills as your driver's speeds start to come down. Most drivers in metro areas will be seen going 80+ miles per hour in the first few weeks after a GPS system is installed. After some encouragement from the management, speeds usually start falling down into the 60's on the freeways, meaning less gas is being consumed and vehicles are operating more safely on the roads. At slower speeds, tires wear less quickly and vehicle maintenance costs start to lower as well.

Asset management software gives a fleet owner more control over his largest asset... his service fleet. With in depth reports like the Start-Stop report, a manager can easily match up employee time sheets with the GPS software to reconcile any differences. GPS vehicle tracking software empowers the business owner's of today in ways that were previously unavailable. Our list of GPS asset management software can be found here. We have GPS systems for owners with only one truck as well as robust GPS asset management systems for companies with thousands of vehicles. Contact us over the web or give us a call to discuss which system would be best for you.