Track your Fleet and Riders in Real-time with Live View Tracking

Fleet Management plays a pivotal role in maintaining smooth supply chain operations and meeting delivery service level agreements. Logistics managers work round-the-clock to ensure that packages across regions are shipped in the right vehicles, and are transported and delivered in a professional manner. They must also ensure effective communication with riders and monitor on-ground activities effectively to take corrective actions when needed.

Managing a handful of vehicles may not be that complex, but when it comes to handling hundreds or thousands of vehicles, across multiple locations on a day-to-day basis, human intelligence alone is not enough to stay on top of on-ground operations. Hyperlocal businesses such as local delivery platforms, home service providers, and passenger mobility businesses also find it difficult to assign vehicles and monitor tasks in real-time.

Due to a lack of visibility in on-ground logistics, businesses often face challenges in supervising riders and tracking unproductive activities such as idle time and extra break hours. Sometimes, businesses also suffer losses from accidents during transit, caused by minor negligence. 

Artificial Intelligence is automating and optimizing logistics operations for businesses in E-commerce, retail, CPG, home services, and 3PL, reducing human intervention in mundane tasks like route planning and rider assignment. Companies are also leveraging AI-led fleet management solutions to successfully track and monitor last-mile operations in real-time. It is also helpful in sharing essential information with customers regarding order shipment, delivery executives, and ETAs.

What is a Fleet Tracking Solution?

But, what is a fleet tracking software and why do you need one for your business? Fleet management software is a suite of applications designed to help companies manage, organize, and monitor vehicles from a central information system to keep the overall fleet operation running smoothly. Real-time vehicle tracking systems allow businesses to ensure vehicle and employee safety, and driver efficiency by monitoring data on driving routes, speeding, idling time, and work breaks.

Top Features to Look for in a Fleet Tracking Software

Investing in fleet tracking software is a smart decision to ensure efficiency, transparency, and consistency in logistics operations throughout your supply chain. But with a number of options available, it can be daunting to make the right choice for your business. Competitive pricing and innovative features are usually the deciding factors while selecting enterprise software. 

Nowadays, Cloud-based vehicle management solutions are popular among growing businesses. These Cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions require minimal set-up costs and work on a pay-as-you-go model. There are some essential features, however, that logistics managers must consider in a good fleet tracking solution. Look for these must-have features while picking your business’s ideal real-time monitoring system.

Live View Tracking Dashboards

A smart fleet management solution offers logistics managers a live status view of on-ground delivery operations via interactive dashboards. Managers can supervise riders remotely via a single screen dashboard and get real-time execution visibility of multiple riders and tours simultaneously. The software makes managing hundreds of riders spread across various locations easy. Live view tracking dashboards also allow managers to handle high volumes of tasks efficiently and accurately. This is especially helpful for E-commerce companies and home service businesses, who deal with large scale operations every day.

Predictive Alerts

In real-time, vehicle tracking solutions typically use a GPS tracking system to monitor field operations such as E-commerce deliveries, home service task progress, and cab movement status. In addition to tracking where the rider or vehicle is, smart fleet management solutions leverage real-world data to offer predictive alerts to logistics managers in case of any deviations from the schedules, planned routes, undesignated halts, exceeded break times, dynamic alerts for maximum and minimum temperature, etc. Managers can take necessary measures to prevent delays and put things back on track instantly with the help of these predictive alerts.

Check out: The Definitive Guide to Logistics Route Optimization

Analytics & Insights

While tracking logistics, fleet management solutions gather large sets of real-time data related to multiple parameters, including rider information, tribal knowledge, location-wise traffic information, peak traffic hours, accident-prone areas, rider preferences, on-ground concerns faced by drivers, and even common causes for delayed or missed deliveries. These information sets are valuable for decision-makers in planning future logistics activities better. A smart vehicle tracking system should also be able to auto-analyze such readily available on-ground data and offer useful insights for effective logistics planning.

Order Status and ETAs

A key objective of using fleet tracking software is to make the whole logistics handling and last-mile delivery process more transparent and reliable for customers. Your live view tracking solution should allow you to share important information such as driver name, contact number, delivery date, shipment details, and expected time of delivery with your customers.

In the case of same-day delivery businesses, such as grocery or food delivery or even home services, the customer should be able to track the status of their order in real-time and be aware of who is handling their order. Sharing real-time data with customers increases their trust in your brand and reduces complaints and grievances remarkably.

The significance of a sophisticated vehicle tracking system for logistics management in today’s competitive and dynamic business environment cannot be overlooked. If you’re considering digitizing your day-to-day logistics planning, and controlling on-ground activities better, implementing a comprehensive and smart real-time fleet monitoring solution could be a sensible move for your business.

Locus offers best-in-class real-time vehicle tracking solutions to businesses in logistics and supply chain. Know more about our fleet tracking software, TrackIQ here.