Key Features of Vehicle Tracking

So you are looking to introduce a vehicle tracking system to your business but you are not familiar with, or don’t understand, the features provided by tracking systems and the benefits they offer. In this article we cover the most common tracking features and highlight the benefits they have to offer.

Live Mapping:

As its name suggests live mapping plots the real time locations of your assets against a road or satellite map of the area they are situated, many tracking systems allow the user to zoom in (as far as street level) or out of the map to identify a vehicles specific location or to view the whole fleet. Most live mapping solutions automatically refresh the screen every time an asset sends a location update making sure the vehicle’s position that is displayed is up to date and accurate. Some tracking systems will also provide a ‘Snail Trail’ of an assets current journey to provide a further understanding of the assets movements to the user.
Whilst live mapping is a fairly standard feature of a tracking system not all tracking applications include it, customers who do not feel that this feature is essential to them can benefit by seeking a lower cost system that does not include this feature.

Reports:

Reports are a key feature of any tracking system. Reports provide historic data and analysis of vehicles movements within a specific date range. Below are some examples of the most common/popular reports available on tracking applications:

Daily Activity – This type of report provides an overview of a vehicles movement on a daily basis and normally includes the following information: Journey Start & End location, Journey Start & End Time, Journey Duration, Distance and Time Parked. A summary is normally included with this type of report displaying the totals and averages for the day and date range specified.

Daily Visits – This report identifies the locations where the vehicle has visited/parked and the duration the vehicle was there for. The report helps to ensure drivers/employees are meeting their contact/meeting targets.

Driver Performance – This report provides data that indicates an employee’s driving performance and includes information such as: Total Idling time, Long Journeys that exceed duty of care regulations, speeding occurrences as well as Day Start & Finish times.

Vehicle Idling – Vehicles unnecessarily idling can be a huge cost that can be easily avoided. Whilst you can’t eradicate engine idling you can reduce it massively. Vehicle idling reports list idling events (within a specific date range) that have exceeded a predetermined time (normally 3 – 5 mins).

Live/Real Time Alerts:

Alerts have proved to be an essential tracking tool for many customers as they notify of key/exceptional events in real time usually by email, SMS or ‘in application’ messages or even all three. Below is an example of common alerts available with many tracking systems:

Location Based – Alerts when a vehicle enters or exits a pre specified area this could be used for locations such as: employee’s home address, a customer address or even a road or roundabout nearby to notify when a vehicle is approaching a depot.

Late/Early – A location based alert that notifies when a vehicle arrives at an address/location outside of predetermined time margins. This feature is often used to ensure mobile workers are punctual and meeting their customer contact targets.

Idling – An alert that notifies when a vehicle has been idling for excessive amounts of time. This allows users to respond and prevent fuel wastage through excessive engine idling.

Driver Activated – Many vehicle tracking systems have the option of a Panic/SOS button to be installed into the vehicle. When pressed by the driver it will immediately raise an alert.