GPS – Now calculating fleet savings as well as routes
May
We know that a GPS unit can calculate a route, but what about calculate savings? An advanced business planning tool, Telogis Route, is gaining popularity for its ability to help fleets calculate savings on planned routes.
Telogis Route is a route optimization application that is part of the Telogis platform, a complete telematics solution that uses GPS technology. It’s used by fleets to calculate smarter routes for drivers, schedule vehicles and personnel as well as helping fleet managers calculate costs and compare routes.
What is every mile driven really costing you?
Before this GPS software can calculate savings it first needs to know what your costs are. You might not even be aware of all the costs involved in running your fleet. There are often a wide range of both direct and indirect operating expenses, as well as fixed and variable costs of running your vehicles and paying your drivers.
By identifying all costs associated with each trip you’ll be in a much better position to manage your costs and make some significant savings!
Costs can change over time as well so make sure you keep your vehicle and driver information up-to-date to improve the accuracy of your decisions.
Compare routes
Now that you’ve entered your fleet operating costs, you can start to see the real potential of a tool like this to reduce costs and improve your bottom line.
For example, one feature can give you immediate feedback on the dollar cost of a route, based on the vehicle being used and the crew required to operate it. That sort of information can be used to make smart business decisions such as the profitability of taking on a new client, using a different vehicle on a route or changing the crew.
It also means the order or sequence of jobs that are required to be done can be put in the most efficient order. Job assignment is smarter too, minimizing out-of-route miles and unnecessary travel.
Makes decision-making easier
When you’re in the middle of a hectic dispatch office and planning for the needs of a busy fleet, it can be challenging to think clearly and analyze all the relevant factors of a particular decision. Chances are you’ll miss something, forget a truck or a driver or send someone doubling back unnecessarily. It all costs money and cuts into your overall profitability.
Automating with Telogis Route means nothing is overlooked when choosing and assigning routes and jobs to drivers. You can trust that it will be creating the most economical and efficient routes, day in and day out, without the brain strain – perfect for those days your head hurts just thinking about it all.
Review your performance for additional fine-tuning
There are always tweaks you can make to your game plan to enhance your profitability even further. Telogis Route includes a useful Actual vs. Plan feature that lets you review your fleet’s past performance to see how closely the optimized routing is being followed.
It means potential problems or needed driver training can be addressed to make sure you’re getting the full benefit of the optimized route planning created by Telogis Route.
Calculating savings – A better way to manage
So GPS is a valuable tool, not just for calculating a route to your next destination, but for providing valuable location data to calculate efficient routes for your drivers, optimize job sequencing and job assignments as well as territory planning – which all add up to valuable savings for fleets of all sizes.
May 26th, 2011 at 10:11 am
GPS are also interesting for improving drive efficiency, don’t you think so?