Global Positioning Systems (GPS) technology was originally designed to help people identify or navigate to locations, defined by latitude and longitude, on the surface of the globe. A great deal has changed.
GPS devices have now been combined with other tools to give service business owners information about drivers, service locations and customers that was not available in the past. In a single word, this information is “visibility.”
GPS is a tool that that is becoming, like the telephone, indispensable to service businesses. It is easy to use and goes anywhere. It combines with other services to make business significantly more competitive and improve service to customers, while improving productivity and profit.
Compelling benefits
The first questions that come to mind are:
1. How much does this cost?
2. Do you have to be a rocket scientist to use it?
The cost of GPS (apart from hardware and installation) is about the same as for most phone services: about $19.95 to $50 per month, depend-ing upon features and usage. As for ease of use, it is like the phone: Learn a few basics, and away you go.
Let’s look at a few of the more compelling GPS capabilities. Figure 1 is a map of a location. Figure 2 is a photo of the same location that you can see on a computer screen while on the phone with a customer. Using a view like this, you can help your driver identify the precise location of a service point on a property. That means your driver can deliver your service without wasting time.
Every time a driver calls in because he or she cannot find the job, it costs you about $100. By linking to web-based views, you can see detailed pictures of driveways and yards while on the phone with customers. This helps you get detailed service or delivery instructions and minimize driving time. You also avoid the extra cost of drivers getting lost, or reporting to the wrong building, manhole, cleanout, or other service point.
Getting control
GPS also helps you gain more control over your business. Before GPS, when your employees left your office, they ran your company. To find out what was happening, you had to wait until the end of the day, or talk with employees by radio or cell phone as they completed each stop on their routes.
With GPS, you can track each driver’s progress through a day at a glance. A GPS screen (example in Figure 3) can show detail of where the vehicle is, its speed and direction, when and where the vehicle has stopped, and for how long. Your office can actually watch your drivers throughout the day.
Drivers no longer can stop and have lunch or breakfast as a group, or park and take a nap, or — even worse — use your company vehicle for personal business. You always know where the vehicle is. That knowledge is the power to help you direct your vehicles and to help employees make choices in the best interests of your company.
GPS also can help you measure technicians’ productivity and compare them by driver and by vehicle. You can see the cost and before-tax gross profit on work done in the field with little clerical effort, and so understand which employees are your most consistent producers.
In addition, GPS helps reduce the cost of doing business by lowering vehicle operating and maintenance cost. You are notified if a driver exceeds the speed limit or if a vehicle goes into an unauthorized area (triggering a zone alarm). Last, but not least, GPS can help eliminate the stress of drivers getting lost. In effect, it increases your fleet because drivers use their time more efficiently when they have access to maps and accurate driving instructions.
A standard tool
Of course, something this good does not come without issues. First, GPS is an added cost of doing business. Second, drivers who until now roamed freely may complain about what they see as an invasion of privacy.
However, most drivers understand that things like meeting for breakfast after leaving the yard are not appropriate. Furthermore, if you present GPS properly, your field people will understand that GPS can become a positive by enabling them to document their performance and prove their value to the business.
Once GPS, like the phone, becomes a standard tool used by your company, you cannot run your company without it.
Joel Smith is a principal with Clear Computing Inc. of Tinton Falls, N.J., a provider of management software solutions to service and delivery companies. He can be reached at joel@clearcomputing.com.
