Vehicle Tracking On Time Delivery

The increasing competition by fleet operators to offer their customers higher standards of service efficiency is only likely to be ramped up in the coming few years of a so-called austerity Britain. Streamlining running costs will be balanced against driver resources and keeping a fully functioning fleet on the road.

Remote asset management has been totally transformed across the fleet industry by the take-up of GPS vehicle tracking technology by many companies and organisations operating in different sectors, yet all requiring to deliver ever finer time- based customer services.

Since the introduction of critical time slot home delivery services by major UK supermarkets, the bar has been raised and expectations of delivery service provision have altered accordingly. Telematics industry analysts now predict that by 2011, most of the major UK suppliers will be competing to offer the narrowest delivery slot.

Under these demands, the likelihood is that only those fleet operators who have readily bought into realtime vehicle tracking, or a similar customised fleet tracking module, providing key strategic benefits, can hope to maintain their competitive edge.

Even for a SME business with only a small number of vehicles and budget constraints, a basic vehicle tracker can provide the means to ‘locate and communicate’ with an efficiency that can radically improve time planning and appointments management.

Currently the majority of standard delivery times offered tend to be based on a half-day slot - either am or pm - which means for the residential sector, half a day has to be taken off work, waiting for goods delivery or a service engineer. The situation for some time critical commercial industries can often be found wanting.

The ability to enable businesses to schedule narrow delivery windows using the fewest vehicles at the lowest mileage means increased fuel efficiency, less CO2 emission and ultimately, lower running costs. Minimising delivery/ appointment times to within a one or two hour time frame should be the goal for a service delivery company.

Retaining customer loyalty during challenging economic times is going to become key to survival and thus, offering a customer their choice of delivery slot and being able to keep to the schedule will be where future contracts are won or lost.