Many large businesses running fleets of vehicles now have vehicle tracking. It’s common place for these businesses to use GPS tracking because it helps them run their business in multiple ways and has multiple advantages.
The problem for telematics businesses is cracking the SMEs. Many small businesses still do not have vehicle tracking because they believe that they are too expensive. For some businesses they simply cannot afford it, but for others they just have a perception of it being too expensive. The problem that tracking companies have is to educate many smaller business men and women the full benefits tracking can bring to the business. How it can help to save the business a lot of money. How it can help to improve customer service etc.
GPS real time vehicle tracking can give you a live display of the location of your entire fleet including many details regarding each vehicle. This type of information given to you live throughout each day can be invaluable to helping you run a smoother operation.
The type of information you can expect to receive from vehicle tracking varies from system to system, but here are some of the more common features.
Geofencing is a feature where you can setup predetermined areas. When a tracked asset leaves or enter one of these areas an alert is sent via either SMS or email. This can be useful for a variety of reasons. You may not want your drivers to leave a certain area. You may want to be alerted when drivers arrive at particular destinations. There are a lot of reasons why you may want to be alerted when vehicles enter a certain area.
Other information your tracking system may collect is how often each of your vehicles idles for. Excessive idling can waste a lot of money on fuel and it is an unnecessary waste which can be tackled if you know which drivers are guilty of it.
You can also have reports on the driving style of your drivers. This can make you aware of drivers who repeatedly speed or driver in an uneconomical manner. Yet again if you can pin point the problem then you can solve it.
There is feature called canbus integration and it is a system which integrates into the canbus of a vehicle to keep tabs on the fuel efficiency of each vehicle.
The other objection many have to investing in GPS fleet tracking is being tied up in a long contract. The fact of the matter is that these days there is no need to sign up to long contracts in order to get tracking. Many tracking companies now offer pay as you go payment options. This only requires entering into a three month contract.
The fact of the matter is that a vast chunk of the market is untapped and much of it lies in the SME sector. Tracking companies will have to fully crack this section of the market if they want to fulfil the full potential of tracking sales.
This will take time, but as prices come down and more realise the ease of getting tracking via pay as you go options, tracking stands to only get more and more popular. In the industry it is suspected that vehicle tracking will grow exponentially over the next five years and that in five years time it will be extremely popular.
Time will only tell for sure how things turn out, but it is looking like the value of the vehicle tracking market in five years will be worth many times what it is worth today.