Vehicle Tracking FAQ

(Editorial attributed to Martin Davies, Director Remote Asset Management Limited.)

Is it all about tracking vehicles or can you do more than that?

Vehicle tracking is a misleading term when trying to sum up the many advantages of a comprehensive fleet management system.  Tracking a vehicle is a core component of any telematics system, but to make sense of why anyone would want to employ one, that element needs to be integrated with a comprehensive business improvement tool that can be used to analyse the pros and cons of how well your fleet works – or not, as the case may be.  At Remote Asset Management (R.A.M), we provide users with a suite of live and historical reporting facilities to enable that task to be undertaken and the results to be maintained.

Live Tracking:
To the stereotypical Marketing types, the live element of our system is without a doubt considered to be incredibly sexy!  Users can pinpoint a vehicle within a matter of seconds and display it graphically on a map right down to street level, which is invaluable when you need to locate the whereabouts of an important engineer or a delivery.  However, the artificial intelligence of our system takes that one step further by allowing an office based user to highlight a zone on the map – say the customer’s address – and set an alert when the vehicle enters or leaves that area.  This means important deliveries, or maybe a rapid response engineer that’s expected at a specific time, will automatically report in – allowing companies to better manage their customer relations, whilst adding to the productivity of the fleet. 

Historical Reporting:
Reporting and analysing vehicle movements might sound like a time consuming and somewhat mundane job, but the R.A.M system makes this number-crunching exercise incredibly easy.

With a suite of reports, showing a variety of topics; such as ‘time spent at customer locations’, ‘hours worked’ and ‘detailed journey and summary journey reports’ to name a few, fleet managers can see in an instant where their fleet is being productive and where it’s inefficiencies are. 

So essentially, a telematics system is far more than just vehicle tracking – it’s a ‘common sense everyday business tool’.

What are the benefits in terms of potential savings in fuel, repairs, maintenance and safety?

The benefits of using a telematics system come in many forms, not least in a monetary value, but look a little deeper and you’ll find a plethora of savings and advantages, all designed to maximise your fleet operation whilst giving you the advantage over your competitors. 

After just a short period of using a R.A.M system, our clients have reported many benefits:

Lower fuel bills – Fleet schedules can be planned better and emergency calls can be distributed to the closest vehicle and not simply to the driver who normally says ‘yes’. Engine idling can also be monitored to cut back on wasted fuel, which in turn does benefit the environment through a reduction of CO2 emissions!

Increased productivity, in essence more business – because the system allows businesses to streamline their fleet movements in real time and in many cases our clients have actually reported completing more jobs by the same number of vehicles than that prior to installing the R.A.M system.

Safety – this works in a couple of different ways.  Speeding – amongst others – can be noted on an exception report.  Our clients have shown that they can offer their employees additional road training, or it might show that a schedule is too tight and the driver could only meet his targets by trying to make up time during a difficult route.  Proactive steps can be taken to increase general road safety, or inefficient schedules can be reworked.

On another level, the live track facility and the user defined alarm zones can help improve the safety of lone workers, meaning that assistance can be sought if an employee is at a location beyond the times expected.  Clients that employ lone workers have found this invaluable to adding another layer of protection for their staff.
Communications – ‘WHERE ON EARTH ARE YOU?’  Gone are the days of phoning every member of your fleet to ask them where they are – so to are the variety of ‘alleged’ locations given in response.  Lower phone bills represent an immediate saving for many companies; whilst instant and accurate reporting through the R.A.M system costs nothing, thanks to the ‘always-on’ GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) communication system that’s used to relay data between the vehicle and a busy fleet office.

Maintenance and repairs – Again, proactive measures can be taken by companies to ensure that there is no drop in productivity when a vehicle is off the road.  Furthermore, mileage is fully monitored, so maintenance schedules can be planned in advance with great accuracy.  The system can also be used to plan ‘on the fly’, should a vehicle be involved in an accident.  Fleet managers can re-assign vehicles to lessen the impact when one is suddenly forced out of service. 

The reports from a vehicle in these situations also provide an auditable trail during any claims, verifying the liability of the company or driver.

What are the cost implications and are there savings?

To operate a fleet management system costs less than a couple of pence per vehicle per day, but the rewards are often ten-fold.  For the reasons mentioned above, fleets across the UK have been saving lots of money on their mobile operations even after they’ve recovered the cost of the system itself.  The R.A.M system is leased to companies on very attractive terms.   The leasing arrangement is of great value to clients, as all software upgrades are given free and the company provides ongoing technical

Don't staff feel it's very Big Brotherish being tracked, even potentially out of hours?

If you’ve never experienced a tracking system before, then concerns are natural; however these are soon overcome when employees see the ways in which they benefit from having a tracking system installed in their car, van or lorry.
Benefits come in many ways, such as:

Does it stop theft?

A vehicle tracking system from R.A.M is not designed to be a deterrent of vehicle theft.  It does however have the inherent ability to recover stolen vehicles, leading police on a trail of crime or simply to arrest an unsuspecting joy rider.  It’s difficult to actually say whether fleet management systems have actually impacted on national crime figures (above those already recorded by well-known theft recovery systems), but it is certain that criminals can’t be totally sure that the vehicle they’ve just taken isn’t being watched.