In fleet management, logistics in the broad sense plays first fiddle: the skilful juggling of vehicles, drivers and results so as to generate maximum profit from vehicle operation at minimum cost. The experience of recent years shows that Polish car and machinery fleets need more computerised management. It is very encouraging that companies recognise the advantage computers have over machines in calculation speed, document record-keeping, remembering important dates and communication. That is just a small slice of the broadly defined areas in which GPS tracking brings enormous benefits. Today we present the top 5 best fleet management tools. Compare, check and make your choice.
Fleet management and vehicle monitoring based on satellite system readings
Every vehicle management and fleet monitoring system is based on tracking the current position of vehicles, analysing the routes driven and statistics, and keeping servicing on schedule. We owe the invaluable ability to locate vehicles anywhere on Earth to the United States Department of Defense for inventing the satellite system called GPS. Bear in mind that the roughly 30 Global Positioning System satellites are not the only satellite navigation system used by 21st-century civilisation. The Americans began work on GPS in 1973, but the Soviet Union did not lag behind and in December 1976 began its own research to create the GLONASS satellite network. Until 2000, Russia and the United States were the only countries with their own navigation systems. The third country to join this distinguished group is China with its own Beidou navigation system, which for technical reasons could not compete with the pioneers; in 2012 its coverage extended only to part of Asia. In December 2016 a fourth globally available satellite navigation system was made available to civilian users. Galileo, created by the European nations, is meant to be more accurate than its biggest rival, the American GPS (to 1 metre on the free frequency and to 10 cm on the paid frequency).
Number 5: Live position view and route history in the GPS tracking system.
There is no doubt that knowing the current location of each vehicle is very valuable information that lets you predict the arrival time or make sure the journey is going without complications, without contacting the driver. The trackers in the vehicles are configured to send their position to the database server at set intervals, together with peripheral readings for that point, such as current speed, current mileage, current engine temperature or supply voltage. The pool of additional information consists of more than 30 values which, depending on the vehicle model, are read from the vehicle's CAN bus. A complementary function to live vehicle tracking is the option of visualising the route driven. Displaying the group of points sent by the tracker in chronological order produces the route trail, and calculating the differences between parameters reveals the length of the route, the amount of fuel burned or the driver's driving time.
Number 4: Reports based on vehicle monitoring data summarising mileage, fuel consumption and working time.
Reports are the best way to summarise the work of a vehicle or group of vehicles over a long period. They are easy to store thanks to export to PDF or print. Export to a spreadsheet allows you to process the data yourself, and the wide pool (over 30!) of different report templates provides information on almost any subject. The most popular are journey reports showing stop addresses and the length of the sections between them. The so-called road card is also a convenient solution, containing a summary of daily driving time, stops, fuel burned, average consumption and maximum speed. The Navifleet system makes it possible to settle the work of many vehicles thanks to advanced comparisons of several vehicles or drivers. We wrote more about reports in the Navifleet system in the reports section. With reports, fleet monitoring and vehicle management are much easier.
Number 3: Alerts about driver abuse and reminders of important dates for company vehicle checks.
The easiest tool for controlling drivers is the alerts module. The Navifleet® system has an advanced alerts and notifications module that meticulously records every abuse. Managing a company car fleet through the alerts module is even more effective with the function that automatically sends the list of alerts to an e-mail address after each day. Alerts can be configured so that information about any critical event reaches the right person by text message or e-mail.
Number 2: Specialist tools for fleet management, settling business trips, mileage, working time and much more.
Navifleet® is a vehicle tracking system with a very wide range of applications. Every type of vehicle, and indeed every industry, has its own unique needs that a vehicle tracking system can meet. Creating specialist fleet management tools is a very time-consuming task from the perspective of the fleet application's author, but the results of implementation exceed the boldest expectations. The Navifleet® system includes several complete tools that ease the tedious work of people who settle fleets. The newest is the tachograph working time control module, which calculates the driver's working time indicators by itself, based on the legal rules. A huge advantage of this fleet management tool is the full information displayed to the dispatcher about the available working time of a specific driver, without having to call them and ask them to check. We wrote in more detail about implementing this functional panel in our article on driver working time control. Another module, also useful for transport, is the foreign business trips module, which is constantly developed in cooperation with experienced accounting firms. Passenger car fleets can use automatically generated vehicle mileage records required for submission under the VAT-26 form in order to deduct the costs of using a company vehicle from tax.
Number 1: Integration of GPS tracking with settlement systems, exchanges and internal applications
The honourable first place in "TOP 5: the best fleet management tools" goes to the function least appreciated by clients and authors of GPS tracking systems. IT system integrations are an enormous force in simplifying and automating a company's life. Integrations most often lead to an exchange of information between one system and another. The most popular integrations include coupling freight exchanges with the vehicle monitoring system, so that transport managers have information about the current positions of vehicles and the freight orders appearing nearby. The Navifleet® system has also been integrated with the ENOVA settlement system, a popular accounting and HR program. A practical use of this integration of GPS tracking and accounting software was settling business trips based on data automatically recorded by GPS trackers. We described the subject of integration with freight exchanges and integration with the ENOVA accounting program at length in articles on our blog.
To sum up...
Vehicle monitoring systems are rapidly evolving into powerful fleet management programs. It makes no difference whether we are talking about monitoring lorries or cars. For businesses this is a considerable advantage: over time, algorithms and programs will relieve more and more areas. This will raise employee efficiency and increase the company's profit. The new era of GPS tracking systems is only just arriving...
