Category: Blog

Why Is Snow Plow Tracking Essential for Winter Maintenance

Posted on | by Devin Johnson

Snow Plow Tracking: An Essential Winter Maintenance Tool

It’s that time of year again, the weather is getting colder and it’s beginning to snow regularly. The snow plows, if they haven’t already, will soon be out in full force. You may already have GPS fleet tracking on your company vehicles but now it’s time to make sure you have snow plow tracking to keep track of all of your snow plows.

As a maintenance manager, fleet manager or dispatcher at a business specializing in snow removal and winter maintenance, you already know you have to keep costs down wherever possible; winter is the perfect time to invest in GoFleet’s snow plow tracking system to help you improve efficiency and productivity while decreasing costs. It will help you increase your bottom line and your company’s longevity to ensure success. With GoFleet, you will see a return on investment in no time.

Benefits of Snow Plow Tracking

When you use GoFleet’s snow plow tracking, your winter maintenance and snow removal business will receive many benefits including:

  • Real-time snow plow vehicle locations
  • Time spent at job sites
  • Efficient route planning
  • Improved dispatching
  • Alerts when vehicles arrive and leave job sites
  • Reduced fuel costs
  • Reduced idling times
  • Accurate time cards
  • Locate stolen or lost assets
  • Monitor vehicle usage after hours
  • Preventative maintenance reminders
  • Lower insurance premiums
  • Accurate estimated arrival times

GoFleet’s snow plow tracking provides many benefits that will increase your overall productivity, reduce costs and improve customer satisfaction. Snow plow tracking helps you determine if too much or not enough time is spent at a job site. You will know the location of your vehicles at all times and be able to ensure all jobs have been completed on time. The easy to use fleet management software will let you view all of the information necessary to improve your service in one easy to use platform. Once you implement snow plow tracking, you will immediately see why it is essential for your winter maintenance business.

For more information about GoFleet’s snow plow tracking and how it can be used to improve your winter maintenance business, Contact Us today.

7 Tips for the Resourceful Small Business

Posted on | by Devin Johnson

Small Business: 7 Tips For The Resourceful Business

For a small business to stay afloat in this economy, they must be resourceful. Since budgets are smaller, new ideas need to be as cost-effective as they are proactive. Businesses must take everything into account including customer needs, cash flow, industry changes, and potential unexpected challenges. In order to stay competitive, small businesses need to take a creative approach to stand out from the rest.

According to 7 Bootstrapping Tips for the Resourceful Small Business, the below tips will help you do more with less:

1. Use Your Time Wisely

It is easy to get caught up in all of the potential opportunities for your business. It is important to prioritize opportunities and goals to decide what you should do and what needs to be reconsidered. This will help your development team understand what tasks need to be done first.

2. Use Customer Feedback Appropriately

While customer feedback is extremely important, it is important you know how to address it. Sometimes what the customer wants can actually hurt their experience with your company. In addition to getting feedback, you should track your customers’ behaviors. Use the feedback with the behavioral data to decide how to use the customer feedback.

3. Hire The Right People

While hiring talented and highly skilled people is extremely important, if their personality is not a good fit for your company, do not hire them.

4. Hold On To Your Business As Long As Possible

It can be tempting to sell your business to a larger corporation to propel your idea into the big leagues. However, you should hold on to your business as long as you can. The longer you can do it, the more of your business you will be able to keep.

5. Ask For Help

You might be surprised how many like-minded entrepreneurs are willing to help out other entrepreneurs who are going through something they have been through. If you need something, all you have to do is ask for it.

6. Stay Aware Of What Is Going On

Never stop looking for new creative and resourceful solutions that will help you succeed. Remember, you must act quickly and do whatever you need to do to get everything done.

7. Aim High

Always dream big. You do not have to trade your big ambitions to be lean. Be resourceful and come up with creative solutions.

5 Tips for Building a Winning Small Business Team

Posted on | by Devin Johnson

Small Business: 5 Tips For Building A Winning Business Team

There is a solid business team behind any successful small business owner you come across. Every member of a small business team plays a crucial role in making the business a success including the employees, attorneys, accountants and vendors. If one member drops the ball, it can cause the entire system to fail. Unfortunately, you might not realize there is something wrong until you notice it in your bottom line, which could be too late.

It is important you follow the steps below, provided in How To Build a Winning Small Business Team, if you want to surpass your competition and grow your business.

5 STEPS TO BUILD A BUSINESS TEAM

1. Understand Your Business Processes.
Determine the business steps you will need to take and define the individuals needed. For example, a restaurant owner may know the staff required in the kitchen and the servers, but you can’t forget about food suppliers, dishes, refrigeration, kitchen maintenance etc.

2. Determine The Vendors And Materials You Need To Complete Specific Tasks.

Once you understand your business processes, determine the specific vendors and materials you need to deliver the highest quality services and products to your customers. Make sure that the vendors know they will receive more business if they provide top-notch service at favorable pricing.

3. Retain A Contract Attorney. </strong >
Hiring a reputable attorney can really help your business prepare and review business contracts between vendors, customers, contractors and employees. If any legal disputes arise, the attorney can provide quick and reasonably-priced legal services.

4. Establish A Timeline For What Needs To Be Accomplished.

Each member of your business team needs to know the expected timing of what needs to be accomplished. The steps of the process should be prioritized in sequential order depending on time sensitivity and level of importance.

5. Learn How Your Competition Conducts Business.

Secretly learn how your competition conducts business and then conduct your business at a higher level. Send an unknown employee to a competitor’s store to see how the customers do business with the competitor. Compare their team’s abilities to your business team. Any of your competitor’s downfalls should be capitalized on.

ADVANTAGES TO HAVING A SUCCESSFUL SMALL BUSINESS TEAM

Building a strong team that works together can provide many entrepreneurial advantages:

More Time to Work on Growing and Improving Your Business
When your staff works well with your customers and vendors, you will be able to focus on developing your business strategically and not have to stress about daily operations.

Acquire Market Share
A strong team allows your business to operate more efficient than your competitors thus creating market advantage.

Always Improving
Work closely with your small business team to stay on top of your industry’s newest technology; continually focus on different ways to improve your services and products.

7 Steps to a Happy & Authentic Company Culture

Posted on | by Devin Johnson

Company Culture: 7 Steps To Creating A Happy & Authentic Culture

Many small businesses do not understand the concept of a company culture; they don’t tend to think it is something that applies to their business. According to 7 Steps To A Happy, Authentic Company Culture, creating a happy and authentic culture is actually an important concept for all businesses and it can provide a lot of positive value. Once you foster this type of company culture you will find that it makes working at your business both rewarding and fun for you and your employees. Not only will this boost company morale but it will also boost productivity; happy employees are more likely to work harder because they will want the business to succeed.

1. Make Your Company Culture Your Own

It is a huge mistake to create or embrace a culture that is not true to you. It’s important you understand yourself and do not try to replicate the culture at another company. For example, if you are a nerd at heart, then it is cool to be a nerd at your business; build your culture based on your ideals.

2. Do Not Hire Clones Of Yourself

Hiring a diverse group of employees can be extremely beneficial for your business and hiring only people who are like you can actually handicap you. Hire people of all different backgrounds, skill sets and personalities as long as they have similar business goals or end results in mind.

3. Avoid Cancerous Employees

Just because an employee is a top performer, does not mean you should keep them as an employee. You need to avoid employees who are cancerous to your culture or who do not act in your company’s best interest regardless of how much they produce. Cancerous employees should be let go and replaced with new employees who will embrace and reinforce your company’s culture.

4. If You Have To Fire An Employee, Do It Fast

You are not going to hire the perfect employees each time. If an employee is not going to work out, fire them quickly. Do not waste time deliberating if you know the employee is not a good fit for your company.

5. You Should Model Your Company’s Set Of Values

Once you have a set of company values that all employees agree to uphold, it is important that you model them as the business owner. You also need to make sure that your managers model your company values. This will cultivate a positive experience at your company and reinforce the importance of these values in your business.

6. Acquire Companies With Similar Values

If you decide to acquire another company, vet the acquisition based on the company values as well as their financials. If the company’s values are similar, the acquisition is probably a good idea. If they are completely different, you might lose value trying to combine the cultures.

7. Do Not Over-think Your Company Culture

Your company culture should not be over thought; it cannot be controlled in the same manner other aspects of your business can be controlled such as salaries or office locations. Let the culture unfold naturally by nurturing it and shaping it slowly. It will be worth all the effort you put into it.

Fleet Budget: Finding Your Lost Dollars

Fleet Budget: Finding Your Lost Dollars

Posted on | by Devin Johnson

Finding Your Lost Dollars In Your Fleet Budget

As a fleet manager or company owner, you probably spend a lot of time reviewing your fleet budget and expense categories to look for ways to save money. According to Automotive Fleet’s Finding Lost Dollars In Your Fleet Budget, fleet managers usually focus on fuel costs and depreciation. They often overlook the importance of spending a couple days a month looking in other areas to find additional saving opportunities. A great way to uncover lost dollars is to implement GoFleet’s GPS fleet management software.

Reduce Fuel Costs In Your Fleet Budget

There is more to reducing fuel costs in your fleet budget than just searching for the cheapest place to purchase fuel, such as calculating price per gallon and determining the best grade fuel for your vehicles. GoFleet’s fleet management solution helps you reduce fuel consumption by improving your drivers’ fuel wasting behaviors; this can include poor driving habits such as excessive idling, speeding and aggressive driving. Instant alerts can be set up to notify the fleet manager immediately when a driver is driving in a manner that is wasting fuel. This provides the opportunity to have the driver correct the behavior right away.

GoFleet’s fuel card integration allows you to monitor and control fuel purchases. You will be able to lock out any non-fuel purchases such as adding food, cigarettes or other items for personal consumption. GoFleet’s software can also indicate the location of the fleet vehicle when the fuel is purchased. This will prevent fraudulent gas purchases for personal vehicles. You can also control where your drivers fill-up so that they only purchase fuel at gas stations with the best prices or fuel card discounts.

Reduce Vehicle Maintenance Costs In Your Fleet Budget

Fleet managers have the ability to negotiate vehicle maintenance discounts and pricing based on volume. Once the maintenance price is negotiated, make sure the vehicles receive the necessary preventative maintenance. This will ensure the vehicles stay in good working condition and it reduces high costs associated with unnecessary vehicle breakdowns. GoFleet’s Maintenance Assistant easily organizes and reminds fleet managers of all upcoming preventative maintenance. Multiple triggers can be created for each vehicle for any type of preventive maintenance activity based on engine hours, time or mileage. Using GoFleet’s fleet maintenance management software will help you save money on your fleet budget, improve performance and help you follow the best fleet maintenance practices.

For more information about how GoFleet can help you find the lost dollars in your fleet budget, Contact Us.

Fleet Management Tips

Posted on | by Devin Johnson

Effective Fleet Management Tips

When you are managing a fleet of vehicles there are many factors to consider. Your fleet’s overall success is affected by everything from your drivers’ skill level to your inventory status. The larger the fleet, the more complicated it can be to manage the logistics. It is possible for important things to slip through the cracks, costing your business money, valuable time and causing unnecessary frustration. There are several fleet management tips that can help improve your fleet’s performance.

The following fleet management tips can help you manage your fleet effectively:

Develop A Fleet Management Policy

Establish a policy for fleet management including how company vehicles will be provided, required preventive maintenance and replacement life. In addition, create a policy for drivers including hours of use, driver safety, what you expect from drivers, required level of customer service, etc.

Establish Processes

Develop proper processes to support your policies that will deliver the outcomes that you require. This includes the method your vehicles will obtain fuel, arrangements for your drivers to access the maintenance and servicing facilities, and reporting processes for each driver.

Measure Your Drivers’ Performance

One of the most important fleet management tips is to identify areas that need to be accurately monitored and measured. These could include mileage, speeding, idling times, aggressive behavior or other fuel-wasting or unsafe driving behaviors. Constantly measuring and sharing drivers’ performance will play a huge role in increasing productivity, improving driver safety and reducing unnecessary costs.

Communication

When you are managing a fleet of vehicles, it is extremely important to communicate with the drivers and managers. It is critical that each member of your team is fully briefed about the part they play in the fleet. Your drivers need to have a clear understanding of what they are supposed to do each day.

As a fleet manager, you also need to perfect your ability to lead and motivate your team. As you are expected to do more with less resources, it is important that you are able to keep your drivers motivated in order to increase productivity.

Every fleet is different; however, the core goals are usually the same. Most fleet managers are trying to increase productivity, reduce costs, improve safety and improve efficiency. When you are determining which fleet management tips will work best for your fleet, make sure you consider what will deliver the most value to your company and help you achieve your desired outcomes.

Vehicle Tracking Solutions Are Not All Created Equal

Posted on | by Devin Johnson

Vehicle Tracking Solutions Are Not All The Same

In general, most vehicle tracking solutions have the same basic components including a GPS device installed in the vehicles and a user interface that gathers, organizes and displays information. Even though they have the same basic components, all vehicle tracking solutions are not created equal.

Effective vehicle tracking solutions must provide more information than just vehicle locations and route histories. GPS fleet management systems have limitless business-enhancing potential for fleet management that require more than tracking dots on a map. After using the system regularly, most users uncover the full impact of vehicle tracking solutions.

Unfortunately, many providers only set up basic tracking capabilities and they do not commit to helping their customer leverage this extremely powerful technology to transform the way they conduct business. When you are evaluating vehicle tracking solutions providers, it is critical you determine how much interest the providers are showing in understanding your business, specific goals and requirements.

It is important to understand that while the technology is important, it is not the most important criteria when choosing your vehicle tracking solutions provider. The value truly lies in the relationship with your provider and level of support you receive once your system is implemented.

You also need to make sure that the vehicle tracking solution you choose will help you reach your fleet management goals. You need to make sure that the software is easy to use, the equipment is easy to install and the system capable of measuring and reporting your drivers’ performance, driver safety and fuel consumption.

GoFleet is an experienced and reputable provider that works with fleet managers to implement a GPS fleet management system seamlessly in fleet vehicles. The system interprets driving data so that it can be applied to improve a business’ operational efficiencies. The GoFleet team provides knowledgeable and easily accessible sales and technical support for their customers to cover all service issues. For more information, Contact Us.

Driver Scorecard: What it is & Why it’s Important

Posted on | by Victoria Gole

What is the Driver Scorecard & Why is it Important?

What is the Driver Scorecard?

The Driver Score card report helps measure risk and safety scores based on various key indicators such as, speeding, harsh braking, over acceleration, and after-hours vehicle use. Designed with advanced safety technology, users can gain incredible insight into driver’s on-road behavior and make changes that will benefit the company in more ways than one. With the use of rules, the solution is designed to calculate the number of infractions and display data as shown in the chart below. The report, can be customized to each user’s preference to help identify safe or dangerous practices and further develop a fleet-wide safety program.

Why It’s Important?

Lack of safety can be crippling to any business, whether it’s fuel costs, labor costs, or just vehicle wear and tear. Driver safety is often overlooked as it’s tougher to gain quantitative data over behaviours and performance. This causes many companies to learn the harder way through higher insurance costs, maintenance costs and negative business reputation; proving that nothing has a greater impact on operating expenses than driver performance.

The margin of error within driver safety and compliance becomes narrower every year. Any tickets, accidents or claims impacts the entire company and forces harsher penalties, liability, and ultimately higher overall operating costs. There are numerous ways through which companies can implement measures as discussed below. These actions will not only help improve customer satisfaction but have a positive impact on the company’s bottom line.

Driver Scorecard Chart

Action Steps:

  • Post a weekly driver scorecard report for drivers and management. Allow drivers to self-evaluate and make efforts to improve poor driving habits.
  • Define penalties around unsafe driving which puts your company at risk. Communicate that unsafe driving will not be tolerated.
  • Develop baseline measurements of driving habits through a driver scorecard. Evaluate current liability and insurance costs. Set goals for improvement based on the measurements and measure against these goals at 3-6-12 month intervals.
  • Implement driver training for high risk drivers. A study by SAFED showed that the average driver reduces fuel consumption by over 10% following fuel efficient driver training. Additionally driver training reduces risk and claims by as much as 50%.

This Article Was Provided By GoFleet Support

Pizza Delivery Software Keeps Customers Happy with Hot Pizza

Pizza Delivery Software Keeps Customers Happy with Hot Pizza

Posted on | by Devin Johnson

Keep Customers Happy With Hot Pizzas Using Pizza Delivery Software

Pizza delivery companies are using pizza delivery software to keep their customers happy; the software helps them to deliver pizza quickly to ensure the food is as fresh and hot as possible.

Boston Pizza, one of Canada’s largest casual Italian dining restaurants, knew there had to be a better way to manage food deliveries. The franchise owner, Jim Mercier, wanted to ensure his customers always received the ultimate freshness. His interest for a pizza delivery software was sparked. After shopping around, Jim tested out some different fleet management systems but he was unable to find one that met his needs, until he found GoFleet.

Jim was looking for a pizza delivery software that was simple to install and easy to manage; he did not want a complicated installation or confusing software. He was also looking for software that could improve safety as there were often concerns about their drivers speeding. GoFleet’s pizza delivery software was the perfect fleet management system for his business.

Easy To Install And Use

GoFleet’s pizza delivery software is easy for pizza delivery companies to install on their own. Companies can avoid costly installation fees or hardwiring issues that could damage the vehicles. Jim from Boston Pizza stated: “Installation could not have been any easier…even the most technically challenged individual could do it.”

Deliver Hot & Fresh Pizza

The main objectives of pizza delivery software is to streamline deliveries and to ensure the freshness of the food for the customers. The software can be installed on a computer or mobile device near the delivery computer. That way the order taker can view the deliveries placed by the customers and the delivery vehicle locations simultaneously. This will ensure the food is not sitting around for a long period of time waiting for a delivery driver to pick it up.

Using pizza delivery software and developing a system to make sure each order is fresh out of the oven when the delivery driver is ready to make the next delivery are the keys to keeping your customers happy and delivering hot food every time. When talking about GoFleet’s pizza delivery software, Jim said “If you spend a day on our delivery line using this system, you would have it in your restaurant tomorrow.”

For more information about GoFleet’s pizza delivery software, Contact Us.

Ambulance GPS Tracking Increases Response Time

Posted on | by Devin Johnson

Increase Response Time With Ambulance GPS Tracking

For emergency calls, one minute might mean the difference between life and death. That means each minute between the emergency call and the time the ambulance arrives on the scene is critical. The dispatchers must determine the closest ambulance to a location and send it out immediately. With ambulance GPS tracking, dispatchers will not have to guess which vehicle is the closest anymore. The ambulance GPS tracking software will quickly provide the closest ambulance to the emergency location so not even a moment of vital time is wasted.

With ambulance tracker, the paramedics will not have to rely on their memory to figure out the fastest route to the emergency site. The ambulance GPS tracking device will find it for them. The GPS will determine the fastest and most efficient route to the emergency so the paramedics only have to focus on getting there. This also prevents the paramedics from getting lost on the way to an emergency. Turn-by-turn directions will get them to the emergency quickly, even when it is in a remote location.

GoFleet’s ambulance GPS tracking systems monitors the ambulance drivers and keeps track of their locations. With a 3 second refresh rate, response time is cut down and more lives can be saved. The GoFleet system also has the ability to monitor when ambulance sirens go on and off. Dispatchers are able to monitor the ambulances in real-time and when an emergency call comes in, it only takes a second for the ambulance GPS tracking system to locate the closest vehicle. With siren monitoring, dispatchers can tell which ambulances are in-route to an emergency and which ambulances are available.

Reducing the emergency response time is critical to saving lives. When the ambulance is equipped with an ambulance GPS tracking device, dispatchers can locate vehicles faster so they can arrive on scene within minutes.

For more information about ambulance GPS tracking, Contact Us.