GPS Tracking and Your Business: A New Tool to Gain More Customers

GPS Tracking and Your Business: A New Tool to Gain More Customers

If you run a small business, you’ll always be looking for new ways to get more customers and save a little cash here and there. If your company makes any type of delivery, or uses company vehicles, then you’ve probably tried everything you can to cut down on costs such as fuel and maintenance, as well as overuse.

There’s another tool now at your disposal that has recently become more cost-effective for businesses of any size: GPS Tracking. There are several advantages that GPS tracking can offer your company that will save you time, money and hopefully get more people to look into your services. Investing in a new technology can be a challenge and a point of contention for many small business owners, so here’s a list of ways that GPS tracking can help your company grow.

Decreased Fuel Costs

Fuel is the largest expense for any company that uses vehicles (apart, of course, from purchasing the vehicles themselves). By installing a GPS tracking system on your fleet, you could save up to eight gallons of fuel per vehicle, per month. The larger your fleet, the bigger the savings, which means you have incentive to grow whenever you can.

The GPS system helps reduce fuel costs because it can track vehicles stats as well as the routes each vehicle takes. Not only can you monitor the routes so you can find more efficient ways to get from Point A to Point B, but the system will record driver tendencies, like idling and hard braking, which increase fuel usage and, therefore, fuel costs to the company. The GPS systems can also track speed habits as well.

You can share these reports with your drivers, which will make them more conscious of their driving habits and make them think about their choices when they are on the road.

Automatic Maintenance Scheduling

Along with fuel costs, you need to be aware of maintenance costs and scheduling. If you neglect to keep up with maintenance on your fleet to keep it in top working order, then you may be faced with even more expensive repairs in the future.

A GPS tracking system can also be set to alert you when scheduled maintenance is just around the corner. This means that you can automatically keep track of oil changes, tire rotations, tune ups and even license renewals that you may need to stay operational. All you have to do is input the schedule you want to adhere to for all maintenance needs and the GPS system will take care of the rest.

This tool will free up time from manually tracking and scheduling maintenance orders so that you and your employees can focus on larger issues, like getting more customers and bringing in more revenue.

Verify Work Hours

One of the most difficult things to keep track of is the actual hours that your employees work, especially when they are out on the road. And while you want to pay your employees as well as you can, you don’t want to pay them for wasted hours they weren’t really working for. Again, a GPS tracking system can help.

The system will let you follow the location of each vehicle, from the start of the route to the delivery point. This means that you can watch in real time as each vehicle heads toward its destination and see if there are any unnecessary stops, or breaks that take way too long.

By using this feature, you can give the offending employees a chance to correct the problem themselves. You can also dock pay when necessary so you can avoid paying fraudulent overtime wages.

Satisfied Customers

Not only will all of these features of a GPS tracking system save you money immediately and constantly, your customers will be happier with your company’s performance.

With reliable GPS tracking, you will be able to more accurately predict when deliveries will arrive — sometimes down to the nearest minute — which will allow your customers to focus on more important things than waiting around for a truck.

Not only will this make your customers happy, it will demonstrate your commitment to accurate and timely deliveries, which will increase the chances of your existing customers recommending you to others. The double benefit of saving money and growing your customer base will help your company grow in turn.

If you’ve tried everything to save money and increase your customer base without success, try a GPS system for your fleet.

Poppy Kent writes about business topics for a range of websites and blogs. She started her own consultancy business several years ago, and enjoys helping independent businesses succeed.