Today’s sophisticated GPS fleet tracking systems do a lot more than just show you where your vehicles are located. They collect data that can help managers identify hidden problems, coach employees, reduce fuel and maintenance expenses, lengthen vehicle service and improve visibility into essential business functions that can lead to improved efficiency and profitability.
Assessing a fleet tracking system’s ability to translate data into useful insights—and get the right information to the right people—is an important area to consider if you’re investing in a vehicle monitoring system for your company. In this article, we show you four key areas to look at when assessing vehicle monitoring systems, and point out specific questions to ask during any fleet tracking demonstration to help determine whether the system will meet your needs.
Dashboards
You need to evaluate a dashboard just as you would any other critical capability within the solution. Pay close attention to what’s shown and the value it delivers. This is where you’ll measure how well your team is performing on metrics like idling, speeding, harsh driving, miles driven, hours worked and more. If it isn’t easy to use and understand, it can make it difficult to get real results from the system.
What to ask:
- How does the product summarize activity of the entire fleet or a group of vehicles, not just one vehicle at a time?
- Can I customize benchmarks for the metrics you are showing me? How?
- How do I drill into activity details relating to this metric?
Alerts and Reports
There are a lot of ways to ask and answer the question, “how is my fleet performing.” Getting information that’s easy to understand at the right time is critical. Watch for the configurability of alerts and reports so that performance information is easy to understand, instead of an avalanche of detail.
What to ask:
- Can I configure the frequency of alerts? How are alerts triggered? How is that determined?
- What reports do you have for someone making long-term business decisions? What about for someone responsible for daily operations? How about vehicle maintenance?
- In order to use your reports to audit my fuel bill, do I have to compare two separate documents or can you integrate my fuel bill information?
- How do I use your solution to audit timecards with your reports?
Administration and Setup
Getting new software up and running can be time consuming and frustrating. But it shouldn’t be. Make sure to ask your potential vendor to show you the details about how setting up your account works, as well as what settings there are that you can change.
What to ask:
- Is it possible to control which users can access which features with permissions?
- Does this require help from IT to set up?
- How can I customize the system, and how easy is it to do so?
- Can I schedule delivery of customized reports based on user profiles?
Map Quality and Functionality
For many customers, and for large fleets in particular, the map will be one of the most frequently used capabilities within the solution. So pay special attention to how easy it is to navigate, how many clicks it takes to dig into detail and how intuitively you can find what you’re seeking.
What to ask:
- Who is the mapping provider for the system? Does the mapping provider invest in innovation?
- How much control do I have over what I see on the map?
- How difficult is it to find the closest vehicle to a job site or other location?
- Can the balloons be customized? How do you customize them?
We hope this information helps you save time, money and frustration when you’re selecting your vehicle monitoring system. To learn more, download this Fleet Tracking Buyer’s Guide.
Download the Fleet Tracking Buyer’s Guide
