Fleet Manager Tasks

When the workload gets too full, people are occasionally asked to go over and beyond their normal duties. Good fleet managers default is doing that every day.  Juggling a multitude of tasks is the norm, not the exception. From just listening to clients, we created some tasks that are common to most fleets. The Fleet Manager gets to the shop about 7:30 and gets a cup of coffee. Then the Fleet Manager proceeds to:

• Check emails, schedules, voicemails to see who is going to be here and who is not.
• See if there are any carry over tasks from previous day or any emergencies that came in overnight that will effect scheduling.
• Check traffic and weather to make estimates about fleet activity.
• Meeting with senior management to discuss new KPI’s and advise on ways to become more efficient.
• Meeting with drivers- receive requests for PTO, gather timecards, discover that driver is not here, call cell phone, safety brief reminder to drivers.
• Back to office to check email again- inform dispatcher of driver absence.
• Receive maintenance report from mechanic – sign off on work completed.
• Review inventory and file request for approval for parts expenditure in vendor supplier portal.
• Field phone call from person irritated that a service vehicle was speeding in the neighborhood.
• Create powerpoint presentation on fleet expansion program.
• Create budget forecast and staffing requests.
• Schedule meeting with fuel card supplier.
• Meet with senior management to discuss hybrid vehicles and fueling policy.
• Write op-ed for fleet magazine as requested by marketing department.

Then he breaks for lunch… At InTouchGPS we understand that there are many components of a fleet manager’s job. While we can’t take everything off of your plate, our application does automate many of the time bearing tasks that you currently manage and helps make your fleet management more efficient.  While saving money is a huge benefit to the company, saving you time is equally important.

Contact us to schedule a demonstration and see how we can help you do so.

3 Ways To Use Landmarks

InTouchGPS has a landmark feature in its application that allows you to create a virtual fence (some call it a geofence) around any specific location. Our landmark features includes an alert capability that notifies you when a vehicle arrives and leaves that specific location. Creating landmarks is as easy as inserting an address or picking a location on a map. Our software even allows you to define customs shaped landmarks exactly where you need it.

Our software runs reports to determine the arrival, duration and departure times of vehicles at the landmarks of your choosing. You can also set up live alerts so you’re notified when a vehicle reaches and leaves its destination. If you wish to track vehicles at a landmark individually, in groups, or as a whole, you can. You can track by the landmark (i.e. show everyone who came to this landmark) or by the driver (show me every landmark this driver went to).

Here are three examples that we have seen of businesses using landmarks in an interesting way.

1) Creating negative landmarks to enforce policies

A client owns a lawn service company. They would have their morning meeting to find out their jobs for the current day. The fleet would then disperse and go their way. Well that is what was supposed to be happening.  In reality, what was happening was that the fleets were leaving the home office, only to meet up at a large gas station about 3 miles down the road. The drivers would get into conversation with each other and 20-30 minutes per day were spent gabbing when they were supposed to be working. The client sat his fleet down and discussed their policy again and then implemented Landmarks and created one around the gas station. That way he would be notified if a driver was spending too much time there or not doing what they were supposed to be doing.

2) Creating Alerts to Start Event Scenarios

A client owns a recycling company. One of the problems is that it was hard to provide an exact ETA of when a driver would get back. The team that unloaded the trucks would either be standing around waiting or they would arrive late to unload the truck. The client set up a landmark 2 miles out from his facility. When any vehicle entered that landmark the foreman would receive an alert and muster the unloading team. That way there was no any wasted time and trucks could come in and go much faster. The client said that route efficiency (picking up to unloading and leaving the warehouse again) increased by 3 percent daily. With as many trucks as they have, that is s a huge savings.

3) Provide Proof of Service for Billing 

A pest company in Orlando has a set of clients that they service on a frequent basis. The company adds each new client as a landmark and prints out the report that shows when and how long his people are there. He attaches this report to his billing and said that past issues of people complaining of no shows or not enough time spent has gone to zero since he implemented this.

Here are just a couple of out-of-the-box ways landmarks can be used. We offer many more features that people enjoy and customize to fit their exact needs. Our GPS fleet tracking expertise allows us to help clients come up with solutions like this to improve processes or generate additional revenue. Learn what InTouchGPS can do for your fleet today.

Creating A Safer Fleet

At InTouchGPS we often discuss the various features and benefits of our services and devices. GPS fleet tracking is a tool that solves many problems. One of the largest and most important issues facing any fleet is safety.

“Safety is paramount to our organization’s success”

So how do you make things safer than they already are?

Three Ways to Increase Safety with GPS Fleet Tracking

1)  Improving Driver Behavior by Reducing Speed

Behind cell phone distraction, speed is the number 1 factor in vehicle accidents. While not foolproof,  knowledge that the GPS fleet tracking device is in the vehicle reminds the driver that he or she is being monitored and often extra prudence is applied by the driver. You can choose to set up and receive historic or real time reports on almost any factor related to the vehicle- speed, location, time of use and many others. Not only can you receive this information on a scheduled or ad hoc report, but if important to you, the system can also be set up a text or email when your drivers crosses your defined threshold. Some users have also created their drivers as an additional user on the system and scheduled alerts to be sent to them. A real time alert will often stop the problem immediately.

2)  Keep Your Vehicle Well Taken Care

While our application can ‘t turn the wrenches for you, GPS fleet tracking from InTouchGPS does the next best thing by EASILY allowing you to create, assign and track maintenance tasks through a color coded dashboard. Faulty brakes or overdue maintenance should be a thing of the past. You can also ascribe notes to each task and clone then when complete . Some people even go as far as having an alert sent to  the mechanic when the task is about to come due.

(While not directly related to safety, another functionality of the system is that when you close a work order you can choose to simply delete it, or clone it so you don’t have to put in all of the information all over again. A much-often neglected aspect of safety is the protection of your own assets.)

 3) Protect Your Vehicle

When we think of safety, we think first and foremost about the driver. Safeguarding your vehicle is another component to safety. How do you prevent theft with GPS fleet tracking? You set landmarks and times they are authorized to be utilized by the driver.  You can instantly be alerted via text or email if that vehicle is being operated outside of authorized times. You can then easily track a stolen vehicle and notify the appropriate parties of location. InTouchGPS has assisted companies and the police in recovering several vehicles throughout the years.

Safety is continuous and there are several other ways that we can show you how InTouchGPS helps make your team of fleet and drivers operate more efficiently. Contact us to schedule a demonstration today.

Companies that utilize automotive fleets have different challenges at different stages of the company’s growth. However, at all stages there are certain elements related to the fleet which are important (and factor in how fast the company gets to the next stage)-customer service, fuel cost, driver behavior, vehicle cost.

There are so many moving parts to fleet management that any business owner and fleet manager has a laundry list of tasks and would benefit from fleet automation.

What is Fleet Automation?

Taking common tasks and using a tool to automate those tasks in order to increase efficiency.

For example- What if there was a way that you could take reports that were once done by hand such as timecards, speeding, landmarks and have them all sent you automatically via email already formatted.

What if instead of worrying about every driver, you had the ability to manage by exception. Set up rules sand thresholds that you define and be alerted via email or text if ANY of your drivers pass that line. No messages received means that the fleet is doing exactly what you need it to be doing.

What if you could control fuel costs by controlling speeding which in turn affects fuel costs?

The GPS fleet tracking application from InTouchGPS allows you to do just that. Our fleet automation software provides a feature rich, affordable control mechanism that saves you time. We offer  THE standard in the fleet automation world.

What are your specific issues? What are tasks that take up much of your time? Talk to one of our fleet tracking experts about your SPECIFIC problems or time taking tasks and we will show you exactly how our application can help. What does less time away from those tasks mean to your business? To You?

Technology continues to evolve daily. From smart cars to smart watches and everything in between, our lives are being driven by science. Some habits are hard to break. That’s why we still see companies using manual timecards in regards to their drivers and fleet operations.

The challenge with continuing to stay with your manual process is that it makes it difficult to compete with the company that has automated this task.  This automation allows the drivers and managers to work on other profit generating tasks while you are still trying to decipher if that is a 1, the number 7 or a blot of ketchup on the timecard you just received.

Reduce Labor Expenses with the Help of Fleet Tracking

How?

Fleet Tracking automates your operations and eliminates the potential of human error.

Fleet Tracking allows you to see where your vehicles were at for any given time; adding a layer of verifiability that you didn’t have before. More importantly the InTouchGPS application enables you to automate various reports (to include a Timecard Report ) on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

Not only does it negate the potential of human error, but it also takes the tasks away from the drivers allowing them to focus on the service call instead of paperwork.

Since many of our client’s customers bill on time, these timecard reports also allow you to send proof if necessary.
How much can be saved if you correct 1 hour per work per driver on their payroll reporting?
While most people are honest , inadvertent mistakes or rounding up are made- this eliminates that human error factor and makes sure the driver is paid fairly, however being fair to the company as well and not paying for what was not worked.

With every company, every unnecessary expense should be minimized. We have seen companies break even on the investment of the fleet tracking devices and services in only a matter of days.
What can fleet tracking do for your organization? Contact InTouchGPS today to find out.

One of the greatest benefits of InTouchGPS is that the GPS fleet tracking we offer allows you to manage by exception.

Management by exception (MBE) is a practice where only significant deviations from a plan or guidelines are brought to the attention of management. The idea behind it is that management’s attention will be focused only on those areas in need of action.
One of the ways we do this is by having real time alerts. You define the thresholds and the parameters of the alerts and also the delivery method ( text or email) These alerts are powered by GPS tracking give you some insight into any problems with your vehicles and drivers. While there are many different alerts you can receive, these three can be the most helpful for your business.

1) Speeding Alert
The first important alert that you get with fleet tracking is the speeding alert. There are two reasons you want to have the speeding alert for your fleet: safety and fuel consumption. The alert will let you know if your drivers are going over the speed limit and when they are doing so. When your drivers speed excessively it is always burning fuel unnecessarily. Speeding is also bad for your reputation, and most importantly dangerous to your driver and the public.

2) Excessive Idling Alert
Our system reports every two minutes when the vehicle is on and hour when the engine is off. If there are three consecutive readings as “engine on” but they all have zero speed our system will report and previous readings as idling. Other a complete waste of fuel, it is horrible on your engine, requiring more maintenance.

3) Working Hours
Our system allows you to define when that vehicle is authorized to be moving. To prevent or stop moonlighting or theft this alert is great if you have a quick response rate.
There are other alerts that we have. To learn about these and other features that our application has and how those benefit you, contact InTouchGPS today.

It is in the combination of reducing costs and increasing profits that the value of our application  really shines.We have fleet managers who may have had significant issues with payroll and overtime being abused and GPS fleet tracking saved them several thousand, whereas someone else it didn’t make a great difference in that area, but helped extensively with fuel costs.

We threw some low estimates in as examples to show how various companies would profit, but the ROI is dependent on your company and the problem it is solving.

8 Ways To Discover ROI Through Fleet Tracking

If we look at an individual average annual basis, assuming one driver per vehicle, we use an employee total cost of $30,000 and a vehicle cost of ownership of $12,000. We try to use conservative numbers but when combined, it’s $42,000. If we apply that to ten vehicles, it’s an investment of $420,000. If we look at twenty-five vehicles, that’s over a million dollar investment.

When presented with that scenario “How do you make sure that you’re realizing the greatest return on your investment?”

The answer is InTouchGPS.

GPS fleet tracking can impact your business in two ways: by increasing your revenue and reducing your costs. We’ll look at each of these ways individually.

The first way is by increasing your fleet’s productivity. With GPS Fleet tracking, your employees know that they are always on the clock. They’re held accountable for every second of the workday. You eliminate all frivolous stops. Ideally you will increase the number of service calls, appointments and stops. If you were to add only two additional service calls, appointments or stops per week at a $50 profit point, that would be up to an extra $2,600 per employee per year.

The second way is to help you win more clients. If you’re in an industry where your product and service is similar to others, letting the customer know you utilize fleet tracking is a way to differentiate yourself. You can provide guaranteed service times and appear more professional because you have invested in cutting-edge technology to serve them better. What is the value of adding one additional client every single month due to having GPS?

The next way is by retaining current clients. If you can provide better customer service to your clients through instant and accurate location details of where your employees are and what they’re doing, would that be of benefit to you? Would your clients appreciate it you could produce feature rich reports that would provide solid proof of service. Another factor is the reduction of response times for service calls.  We can improve your routing through our dispatch tool to help determine what the most appropriate vehicle would be to send. Do you have any clients that would appreciate you providing them with all this information?

Let’s  talk about how to eliminate or cut your costs. The first way would be to cut your payroll cost. You’ll be able to eliminate all the billed minutes that weren’t actually worked. There are many times when an employee may be padding their time card. InTouchGPS prevents that. You also can reduce accounting cost, because you can create a virtual time card and set that for automatic creation every week. You can eliminate time spent by employees having to record all their times. You can potentially reduce having to pay expensive overtime wages if they weren’t truly earned. Normally 20 minutes per day of payroll savings at $20 per hour – that’s savings of $1,620 per employee every year.

Another way is by reducing vehicle wear and tear.  You can eliminate all unauthorized driving, use driving tools to cut down on unnecessary mileage driven and use our dispatching feature to find the closest vehicle to a client location. You can also track all your scheduled maintenance required for the vehicles and be alerted when tasks are due, allowing you to minimize out-of-service time and avoid the larger problems that will be caused by late or forgotten service.

InTouchGPS can help you create a green initiative by reducing your environmental impact. Looking at the numbers, only five miles per day or eliminated drive time, with the cost of $0.35 per mile maintenance cost (as well as depreciation), equals the savings of $420 per year per employee. Anytime you’re putting less mileage on your vehicles, you’re also reducing your total fuel spent. We help you create a speeding policy to realize better fuel economy. InTouchGPS helps you eliminate unnecessary idling, savings gallons of gas. Only two gallons of gas saved per week can save as much as $300 per employee per year.

Let’s discuss how we can decrease your overall liability. You can ensure vehicles are not going places that will tarnish your reputation as a company as well as eliminate off-hours liability exposure.  For many of the companies we work with, if their drivers are in an accident on the weekend, they’re still liable even if they weren’t supposed to be driving the vehicle at that time. You can create and enforce speeding policies to possibly reduce accidents and negative attention in the community. Having live antitheft protection on each of your vehicles  gives you a peace of mind. You can often reduce your vehicle insurance and workers’ compensation premiums– something you can check with your provider.

In the past three years, have you had any company liable accidents or reports of poor driving by your employees? What value would having proof of their driving behavior provide to you?

Another way to reduce costs is by eliminating billing credits. You can provide proof of service and always know when and where your fleet is. There’s no way for your clients to say, “You weren’t here.” You can also eliminate those credits due to customer complaints of lateness, especially if you provide an on-time guarantee. You’ll know for sure if your driver was there or if they weren’t. And if they were, you can prove it to your clients. You end up gaining customer trust because you can provide that proof of service. Have you ever been forced to give a billing credit that you couldn’t verify the validity to claim? If so, how will it help to know who was to blame, whether it be the client or your driver?

So now that you have seen what we can do for you, would you like to see how we accomplish this? Please contact us today to see of a demonstration of our application and understand further how we can specifically help YOUR organization get the best possible ROI.

Reasons Why People Choose InTouchGPS

When a business owner or fleet manager decides to implement GPS fleet tracking there are many companies to choose from.

We are honored when someone selects us and we believe that it is usually for one of the following four reasons.

1)      No Contracts – There are many advantages to not having contracts. At InTouchGPS we understand whether it is seasonal, business related or vehicle related that your fleet needs  ebb and flow. One of the reasons that we don’t require contracts is that We don’t  believe that you should be paying for something that you aren’t using. However, it goes beyond that. At  InTouchGPS, we believe that we need to earn your business every month, every day. We don’t want you tied in because of some piece of paper and legal jargon, we want you utilizing us because we make your life easier and your business more profitable.

 2)      Experience –  InTouchGPS  was an early pioneer in providing GPS fleet tracking services. We have been focused on fleet tracking AND ONLY fleet tracking for many years.  Over that time we have had the opportunity to work with almost every kind of company and help them overcome almost any fleet- related challenge.  A lot of people may offer a similar tool as InTouchGPS but similar to a paintbrush, the end result also is defined by who is welding it. We have dedicated staff that will make it a point to understand your business’s fleet needs and show you how the application can solve any issue.

 3)      World Class Support – We have an incredible support team based out of the Orlando area. We have high standards in hiring top shelf talent and follow that up with rigorous training to make sure that our Client success specialist are able to support your needs. We have various ways for you to get help for any need. Whether it is device related, a billing question, an application question or anything else,  you can call us directly, submit a trackable trouble ticket, watch training videos or look for answers through our knowledge library for FAQ’s and their answers. If a case is submitted during the workday someone will get back in touch with you within one hour and if after hours or on the weekend by 10 AM the next business day. We are here for you.

 4)      Training – InTouchGPS knows that there are hundreds of different ways that you could use our system.  For this reason we have a dedicated personnel to help with onboarding.  Once you receive your devices this person will follow up with you and schedule a time convenient for you that we can understand why you decided to implement GPS Fleet tracking and what you want to accomplish. Next we will show you how to set up the application to do just that. Although we pride ourselves on the ease of use of the system you always have our team that you can call and ask about the best way to use the system to solve a specific problem. Whether it’s setting up landmarks and alerts to find out if a vehicle is moving outside of approved hours or showing you how to automate timecards to streamline manual processes this person will walk you through it whether you are just getting started or have been with InTouchGPS for quite a while and just wanting to solve a different issue than the original.

 For these reasons and many others, InTouchGPS is often selected as the company of record for GPS fleet tracking services and devices for businesses across America.

Contact us today to learn what InTouchGPS can do for you.

The Customer Experience

In today’s economy price is often a determining factor. When prices are similar what makes a customer go with one company or another. More importantly what makes a customer stay?

The answer is the level of customer service and how they are treated by your company

Does your customer feel that they matter to you?

InTouchGPS has seen company after company benefit from enhancing their customer service and overall customer experience with the integration of GPS fleet tracking.

How does fleet tracking from InTouchGPS.com

1)      Our application is cloud-based. This means that from any web-enabled device that you can access the application and see where your vehicles are at as well as gain other information that allows you to make other real time decisions. Need to deploy a vehicle to a specific location quickly? Fleet tracking can tell you which one is closest and send dispatch notes to that vehicle.

2)      Searchable application- InTouchGPS works with any size fleet . Some of the fleets we work with have one vehicle and some fleet’s have several hundred vehicles. When you are dealing with many vehicles you can easily get lost in the quagmire of too much data. Our application has filters and search functions built in to easily find the vehicle or vehicle related information you are looking for very quickly.

3)      In this fast paced world we live in, time,  is our most precious commodity. Especially in areas when dealing with services in a timely manner matter (plumbing or AC emergency for example)  customers satisfaction levels quickly diminish as time goes on without your serviceman there. With GPS fleet tracking you can quickly and correctly manage customer expectations, provide ETA’s and updates to your customer.

There are a myriad of ways that GPS fleet tracking can be used and the benefits can be tremendous. To learn more about what InTouchGPS can do for you, contact us today.

For those who participated in scouts as a child, they remember that they often carried a field guide to help them to do things like start a fire, build shelter etc. Life would be easier if everything came with a guide.

Luckily, if you are a fleet manager or business owner, there is a guide to Fleet Tracking and its name is InTouchGPS. You can call our training department or support team at any time and they will help define a solution for your fleet related problem.

InTouchGPS is not only a respected provider of GPS fleet tracking devices and services, but even more importantly we are experts in it’s usage. If asked, here are 5 ideas from a collection of experience we would call upon to craft:

The Fleet Manager’s Handbook

1) Have clear and concise goals both directions on the ladder.

If you are a fleet manager, know exactly what is expected of you and what metrics are being used to define those goals. For example- Lower fuel costs is not as strong as lower fuel costs by 3 percent across the fleet within three months. If you manage the fleet drivers- discuss what you are tracking, what you are not tracking, and you and your company’s goals and expectations for each area.

2) Automate. Automate. Automate.

One of the best things about the InTouchGPS system is that it lets you automate so many tasks. Instead of using your time to create tons of data points, simply schedule a report and forget it. These reports can be things such as timecards, first and final movement, trips, and many more.

3)  Create alerts to allow you to manage by exception, instead of pouring over data to see if someone broke the rules.

Speeding, movement, landmarks and working hours are just of the few alerts that you can choose to receive.

4) Use the application to solve your biggest issue and then tackle the next in priority- you don’t have to do everything all at once.

5) There are multiple ways to find ROI through fleet tracking- discover your largest loss and solve.

Think of some of your challenges and discuss with us different ways that you could use the application to come up with a solution.

To learn about other benefits and how to take advantage of them, contact InTouchGPS today.