GPS Fleet Tracking Software: Your Own Personal Time Machine

Ok, so we have flying drones, cars that drive themselves, pocket-sized computers, houses that control their own heating and lighting, devices that respond to our voice when we ask them to order us a taxi or look up how long a turkey needs to cook, robots, holograms … so when do we finally get time travel?

We've been fascinated by the idea of going backwards and forwards in time for more than a century, since H.G. Wells wrote about it in 1895 with his novel 'The Time Machine.' Who hasn't thought about what they might do if they could go back in time and, say, meet their own grandfather as a boy, or go forward and see what the year 2300 is like?

The dark side of time travel has been explored, too - what if you went back in time to meet Grandpa Joe as a young'un and accidentally caused him to never meet your grandmother … which would mean you would never be born? (See: 'Back to the Future.')

So while the idea of time travel is attractive, even if it existed, people should have serious reservations about ever using it - just in case it goes horribly wrong.

This is like a business cutting corners to save time and money and it backfires. Here's an example: The Chicago Sun-Times laid off its entire staff of photographers a few years ago, and it shows. There's no comparison between the Sun-Times' front pages after iconic Blackhawks and Cubs championship wins versus the Chicago Tribune's, which still maintains staff photographers.

But there's good news: You can still be more productive and shave minutes off here and there without compromising quality of work - and while saving money.

GPS vehicle tracking helps you be more productive by improving routing and dispatching, meaning techs get to the jobsite and customer orders more quickly - but not speeding or driving like a maniac, because the tracking app keeps tabs on that and sends alerts to managers if stuff like that goes down.

Instead, it lets dispatchers and field techs communicate via mobile app, not through endless phone calls, which saves them both a lot of time and aggravation. It gives techs efficient routes to locations based on real-time traffic data, so safety isn't compromised in the name of getting to a job faster - and because drivers aren't speeding or braking harshly, less fuel is guzzled and vehicles take less of a beating, which saves money on fuel costs and maintenance/repair expenses.

It also functions as a digital timesheet - because driver hours are tracked, including time of arrival and departure to jobsites, hours worked equals hours paid, helping reduce labor costs. It also can help with scheduling efficiencies - if you run a report and see that 10 field techs have been doing in a day what 9 could do just fine without hurting customer service or response time, you can adjust the schedule accordingly, and pay one less person to be there.

While GPS vehicle tracking does not act as a time machine for your fleet vehicles (and where you're going, you'll still need roads), it can help you rack up some serious time and money savings - all without cutting corners or damaging your reputation.

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