The Benefits Of Using Geofences For Your Fleet Business

GPS technology has become a popular tool and an effective way to track the location of your fleet vehicles. And once you add geofencing into the mix, the tech becomes attractive and functional for those looking for added safety.

Geofencing offers several benefits and tremendously enhances the safety of the vehicles, helps in cutting costs, and increases overall productivity. With the increasing use of geofence-enabled GPS trackers in the fleet business, including school buses, private taxis, movers and packers, rental cars, and more, this virtual boundary feature is proving to be a boon for safety. 

Let us discuss the geofencing feature and how it can help your fleet business.

• What is Geofencing?

• What are the features of Geofencing?

• How does it work?

• How does it help you in your fleet business?

• How to integrate it into your system?

What Is Geofencing?

The geofence feature in GPS tracking helps you create a virtual parameter and define a geographic area that you consider safe or unsafe. As soon as your fleet vehicles enter or exit this boundary, you get a notification of the same. The managers can create virtual fences as small as your yard or as vast as the entire country. They can also make an outstretched zone like a highway.

Besides these notifications, the fleet managers get a broad perspective of the location of their fleet and activities under the designated zone.

To summarize, the Geofencing features include:

• Location-based: Geofencing is a location-based service.

• Alert: Users can set prompt push notifications like text messages depending on platform configuration.

• Monitor activity: One can set Geofence to monitor activity in a particular area.

• Entry and exit: The management can see alerts when the drivers enter or leave that area.

• Field employees: Businesses can also use geofencing to monitor employees when they are out in the field, automate time cards, and track company assets.

• Corrective actions: Geofencing alerts help fleet managers take preventive and remedial measures and simplify their day-to-day fleet management.

• High Industrial usage: Geofencing has vast utility for several industries like delivery companies, travel companies, car/bike rentals, and more. With geofencing, these industries can ensure that their vehicles are within the agreed area and are less likely to be used for any illegal activity. Moreover, this feature offers extra security for rental business owners and their customers in emergencies. 

Two important terms you need to know related to this technology are:

1. Geolocation: The pinpoint location or placement is called Geolocation.
2. Geofences: Geofences is the border around the tracking point.

The geofencing can use the following programs:

1. Wi-Fi
2. Cellular data
3. A global positioning system or GPS
4. A radio frequency identification or RFID number

How does it work?

These two simple steps are all that you need to know to understand the working of Geofencing:

1. To start using geofencing, you need to create a virtual boundary by specifying a location.
2. Once you set the perimeter, you get notified whenever your fleet vehicle enters or exits it. 

How does it help you in your fleet business?

Fleet management companies have been immensely benefiting from geofencing systems. Here is how the fleet managers can use the geofencing feature to improve their business

1. High Performance

Fleet managers use geofencing to elevate the performance of their fleet vehicles. Information such as turnaround times (TAT), operational cost, fuel expenditures, comparative vehicle efficiency analysis, and route cost analysis help you determine ways to enhance performance.

2. Saves time

Setting geofences around the regular spots that drivers visit, such as loading and unloading areas, warehouses, and rest destinations, allows non-verbal communication, saving time. 

3. Cut operational cost

Geofencing can help you reduce your operational cost. By eliminating the requirement for micromanagement, managing several phone calls, and other manual monitoring aspects, geofencing can help you lower your administrative expenses. The fleet managers can concentrate more on the core business tasks by reducing such costs.

4. Determine exact working hours

Many fleet businesses pay their drivers on an hourly basis. The geofencing feature helps them track their exact working hours automatically. With geofenced perimeters, the fleet management can record their working hours and provide you with an accurate log. It provides details, like the time drivers started working, total duration on the job site, total hours of driving, and more.

5. Payroll processing

Critical data helps in payroll processing. The HR and finance staff disburses the payment to the drivers based on what they rightly deserve. They can calculate payroll with accuracy without managing paperwork and checking manual records.

6. Route Adherence and fuel cost saving

Setting a specific point of interest ensures that your fleet vehicles do not deviate from the route. It can help improve route adherence habits and save extra fuel costs. Also, ensuring that the fleet vehicles follow determined routes prevents wear and tear, thereby lowering the maintenance cost.

7. Better planning

Geofencing allows you to do efficient operational planning and scheduling. Geofencing and GPS data provide you with the exact location of the vehicles, enabling estimation of their ETAs and adjusting trips, timely delivery, and related activities.

8. Security

One of the features of Geofencing is that it assures asset security. Since you receive instant alerts when your vehicles travel beyond the approved boundaries, the chances of theft reduce to minimal.

If the vehicles enter the area where they are not supposed to be, you get a real-time geofenced alert. You can check for the real reason for the deviation and take timely action if you think your vehicle and driver are in danger. 

9. Recover stolen assets

Due to the costly assets in fleet management, theft can cause a financial burden on you. It will be disappointing to lose productivity and create customer dissatisfaction. Geofencing alerts you when the vehicle is going out of the set territory. You instantly get to know if it is out of the delivery area or is in the company’s parking lot. Knowing about your vehicles’ movements can help the police recover from the theft.

10. Avoids personal use

Geofencing also discourages the use of fleet vehicles for personal reasons. These alerts help you detect improper use of the assets and also let you know their exact location. You can have a word with the concerned employee and instruct them not to use the vehicle for personal use without permission. You can then also schedule training, correction, and instructions for the offenders.

11. Verify project hours

Well-maintained and accurate logs are vital to the fleet management industry. These logs reflect the correct details, like when the driver started work, time spent on every delivery, when they finished work for that day, and more. The biggest problem with handwritten logs is that they can be illegible and confusing. Also, they can be edited, making them unauthentic. A geofence can help you verify all the information and have accurate details.

12 Improving customer satisfaction

By sending timely alerts to your customers and keeping them in the loop with ETAs, the customer experiences delight and satisfaction. GPS tracking and geofences help you identify the vehicles close to the customer’s location and enable you to arrange faster delivery. Creating driver checkpoints can help you stay updated on how far the drivers are from the delivery point.

How to implement geofencing?

There are multiple ways fleet managers can use geofencing to improve fleet management and customer experience. Working with a geofencing-equipped quality fleet management software like Matrack will give you the ability to augment business performance and efficiency.

Matrack Geofencing GPS tracker

Matrack is a leader in the fleet management solution industry. All Matrack GPS tracking services offer a Geofencing feature. Matrack’s client-centric companion app and interface make it easy to create virtual boundaries as and when needed.

Matrack believes in providing user-friendly and economical solutions to help you enhance fleet efficiency. You can trust Matrack for GPS fleet tracking with beneficial Geofencing features. The company focuses on providing expert and timely technical support.

Matrack Geofencing GPS tracker offers the following features:

• Easy to install 
• User-friendly 
• It helps you to set Geofencing in simple steps
• Matrack Geofencing GPS tracker provides you timely reports and accurate logs
• With this tracker, you can track the movement of vehicles, assets, and equipment
• You can monitor driver habits and schedule training and instructions for corrective action
• Optimizing the delivery routes is one of the best benefits of the Matrack Geofencing GPS tracker
• Matrack allows you to easily access the data using your desktop, mobile phone, or tablet
• The company offers you 24*7 customer support.

Matrack Geofence offers you:

1. Instant Push Notification
2. Instant email and text alerts
3. Real-time geofence entry and exit alerts
4. Unlimited alerts
5. You can manage the geofence radius with a click
6. Matrack also allows you to locate different geofences to each vehicle

GPS tracking was already helping the fleet managers to locate their vehicles in real-time. Geofencing empowers fleet managers with comprehensive information and data about their fleet vehicles.

Using Geofencing GPS tracker for fleet management companies has become a thing of necessity. Do not delay purchasing a revolutionary, affordable, feature-rich Matrack Geofencing GPS tracker solution.