What are GeoFences?

What is a Geo Fence?

Employers often struggle to improve business efficiency, especially if many employees work off-site, making service calls or deliveries. This is one of the many reasons employers may choose to check their workers’ movements with fleet GPS tracking systems. There are many ways businesses can utilise a GPS vehicle tracking system featuring geofencing to enhance customer service, time management, and route planning for their employees, ultimately resulting in a more productive workforce.

The first step when monitoring employee movement is to properly educate employees on the data collected and how GPS tracking can benefit their business and safety, giving them peace of mind. Then, select a GPS tracking device for your fleet vehicles.

Popular options include

• Bolt GPS Vehicle Tracker: Plugs into the OBD-II port under the dash
• Dart 3 GPS Vehicle Tracker: Hardwired to the vehicle, making removing it difficult
• Remora3 Battery-Powered Tracker: With turn-by-turn tracking and tamper detection.
• Yabby GPS Tracker: A Small battery-powered GPS tracker that can be used for various applications.

Each device has its own set of features for specific applications. Keep Track GPS can help you select the right fleet tracking system for your fleet, ensuring that you have the most valuable features. With our smartphone mobile app, our full-featured tracking system enables you to monitor your employees’ movements, travel routes, speed, stops, harsh braking, and acceleration.

Geo-fencing entails utilising GPS technology to establish a digital perimeter in various places, such as construction zones, delivery zones, residences, workplaces, commercial venues, storage facilities, or even an entire state.

Think of it simply as the virtual boundaries you control. This enables our tracking software to alert or trigger a text message or specified response when the tracked asset enters or leaves the geofenced area or performs a specific activity.

Suppose the asset you are tracking leaves your controlled radius (jumps your digital fence) or performs a specific activity (exceeding the speed limit). A hardwired device can alert the driver and send an alert notification.

Geo-fences can be downloaded directly from our Fleet Management Software onto supported devices, providing the device with knowledge of its current geo-fence, which enables a broader range of new applications. Benefits of geofencing include:

• Driver behaviour includes setting custom speed limits on private property, such as a mine site, and triggering a buzzer when the driver exceeds the limit.
• Turning off cellular communication (and GPS fixes for a period) in a sensitive area, such as at an airport or on an oil rig,
• Depending on the area a device is in, periodic or movement-based parameters can be used to achieve the perfect battery life.
• Turning on a vehicle’s emergency lights in a specific geographical location

Exploring the Use of Geo-fences

Once you have equipped your company’s vehicles with your preferred tracking devices, you can establish your personalisations. The Options include tracking speed, idle time, and breaks.

Global positioning system (GPS) technology, geo-fencing is one of the best ways to track vehicle movement. It allows you to manage routes and work times for better efficiency. Here are a few quick and effortless ways to set up geo-fences to track aspects of your vehicle and product movement. Some of these ways are detailed below.

Visibility

With geo-fencing enabled, you can show your vehicles that enter or leave certain areas. This allows you to record when they arrive and leave designated areas, how long they spend on site, their travel speed, and their behaviour (both on and between job sites).

This information will help you measure and compare productivity to identify vehicles that are not being used efficiently. Tracking the availability of vehicles within your business fleet also means you can assign jobs based on the nearest vehicle or equipment, minimising time and money spent completing tasks.

Using GPS Tracking Data for Maximising Efficiency

This level of fleet management is far more effective than simply seeing your employees’ locations. You can create comprehensive snapshots of each employee’s workday, complete with alerts and timestamps. This data gives you greater insight into where your employees spend the most time. Once you have this snapshot, you can delve deeper into the reasons for inefficiencies and establish more effective systems.

For example, you may discover that one employee often arrives late to their first stop or takes an unexpectedly long time to get from one job to another. Disciplining an employee without understanding their situation may not help resolve any issues, but having detailed location data will allow you to examine the situation more closely.

Utilising a GPS tracking system may help you decide whether the designated route for that employee follows a school bus route or a road that is notoriously slow during rush hour. Creating a more efficient work environment starts with understanding the specific challenges each employee faces..

Theft Protection

A staggering $650 million worth of high-cost construction equipment is stolen from work sites around Australia annually.

Having tracking devices installed in discrete locations makes thieves nervous. Having a device fitted will make them think twice before committing the crime.

Equipment theft has a devastating knock-on effect on businesses and owner-operators. Therefore, the cost to businesses is significant, not only as an insurance cost but also as an operational cost.

Using GPS Trackers and geo-fencing together considerably lowers the risk of equipment theft. You’ll receive an immediate email or SMS alert if something leaves or enters a site outside of scheduled operating hours. For example, if an excavator is only supposed to be used between 5 a.m. and 4 p.m., you’ll receive an immediate notification, or if someone tries to move it off-site late at night. With this early notification, businesses can react promptly, improving the likelihood of recovery and reducing its impact on the industry.

Your GPS tracker can provide real-time insight into the location, status, and productivity of your equipment anywhere, anytime. Knowing the equipment's exact location significantly aids recovery.

Getting your equipment back can be more cost-effective from a productivity standpoint. While stolen assets may be damaged, it is often quicker to repair items, especially specialised equipment, than to replace them.

The most effective recovery method is telematics, a GPS-based tracking system. Telematics is more effective because it provides up-to-date, location-based information about the current location of assets. GPS enables a quick and efficient response, reducing the recovery time.

Even if the asset isn’t recovered immediately, timely notification of the theft can allow sufficient time to arrange alternative replacements, rather than employees showing up to collect a piece of plant or equipment only to discover it is not there.

Solving Potential Problems with Geo-fences

Once you’ve begun gathering your data, you may be able to solve a variety of problems that you’ve been unable to manage before.

Utilising small geo-fences can help you manage the following aspects of your business efficiency:

• Tardiness
• Missed tasks or jobs
• Long or short worktimes
• Missing equipment
• Customer complaints

If you can see more details about where your employees are, how long they stay, and what routes they’re taking, you’ll have a clearer picture of each employee’s movements. Finding and addressing these types of workday inefficiencies with detailed data can help you better guide your employees through route planning and time management techniques, ensuring a smooth business flow.