Geofencing is the ability to mark virtual regions on your map and receive alerts as your drivers move past geofenced borders. Paired with GPS, geofencing can be used for many different purposes, but few benefit from geofencing more than fleet managers. Geofencing provides a unique layer of oversight that goes beyond GPS tracking, giving context to your routes and making it easier to provide refined management of your fleet while they are on the road.
Let's explore 5 benefits of geofencing for fleet managers.
Track Your Drivers Through Key Regions
Rather than establishing a single geofenced region, you can designate your service area with separate geofenced regions. Divide regions by neighborhood and fence target areas. This will create a sequence of alert opportunities that you can easily track as your drivers move through key regions. Geofencing can help you track transit times, make arrival estimates, and easily determine which drivers are in each neighborhood.
You will be able to identify when two drivers are in the same region or identify when there is a service desert between your routes. You can use geofencing to better visualize routes and distribute your drivers and measure how long it takes to get from one region to the next.
Immediately Alert on Unauthorized Movement
One of the most traditional uses of geofencing is to identify unauthorized locations of your fleet vehicles. Geofencing can be used to fence in where each vehicle should be at any time of day. If vehicles stray out of that region, this could be a sign of trouble. Y
ou might have a driver emergency-routing around bad traffic or it could indicate that one of your vehicles is being stolen. Either way, when vehicles leave your geofenced service area, it's reason to check in and possibly take action.
Closely Monitor Drivers in Unsafe Areas
You can also geofence areas where extra caution is required. Icy passes, under-construction roadways, and areas of higher crime rate are all reasons to be concerned and to provide your drivers with a little extra support, if needed.
Geofencing can give you an alert when one of your vehicles enters a cautionary zone. Drivers can be alerted about the best cautionary measures to take while fleet managers pay closer attention to vehicles that are at greater potential risk in case drivers need support while on the road.
This way, if a vehicle slips on the ice or the driver is in danger, the fleet manager can provide immediate assistance.
Better Estimate Arrival Times
Customers today enjoy being able to track the arrival time of their packages and scheduled services. Predicting arrival times can be tricky in many fleet-based service industries, but using geofencing can give customers a distance and range which will sate curiosity and provide a useful form of rough estimate.
You can alert customers when the driver is in their region and how many appointments are between their driver and their scheduled time.
Exploring Geofencing for Superior Fleet Management
Fleet managers have always benefitted from taking advantage of the latest technology to optimize a fleet. From CB radios to the most recent telematics, high tech solutions allow drivers and dispatch to work together to achieve better routes and safer driving.
Geofencing is one of this essential stack, giving you the opportunity to assign zones to the map and increase your level of oversight with custom alerts as your GPS-tracked vehicles move across your service area. From providing specialized assistance to detecting vehicle theft as it happens, geofencing is essentially useful for fleet managers. To explore more about the latest fleet management technology, contact us today.
