Fleet Management Systems

As business grows into the new millenium, GPS Mobile Resource Management (MRM) will become highly recognizeable terms for successful vehicle fleet owners. Fleet Management Systems (FMS) has helped create and implement successful MRM solutions for the transportation industry. Our entire staff is dedicated to protecting your company vehicle assets and improving your bottom line profits. With over ninety years combined in the trucking and insurance business industries, our executives and dedicated staff are exceptionally well qualified to bring professional knowledge to your business. Combine this experience with integrity and you have the assurance of excellent service and competitive rates. There are many market indications that mobile management technology is an essential part of the next level for an enterprisewide infrastructure. Some market research firms predict that the GPS location-based services market will hit close to $5 billion by 2010. New technology, and competition between new companies, seem to back up this claim. Tracking, navigation and mobile management hardware are a growing trend not only in commercial markets, but also in the geospatial markets. An emphasis on security is also playing a role in the need for certain GPS mobile management applications.

All of this indicates that the next area for corporate enterprise growth involves providing real time GPS Mobile Resource Management (MRM). MRM will enable better management of field crews and assets and also allow better response to customers.

What is MRM?

Knowing where your mobile resources are, where they have been, and where they should be to best manage the workload and improve response to customer demand is all a part of an MRM environment. Managing resources through time and space and incorporating real-time operational needs are the essential elements of MRM. MRM can be definted simply as the ability to track the progress of your mobile resources in real-time and assign the right job to the right resource with the right equipment in the right location at the right time.

Since the defense department made its GPS signals available for commercial use in 1993, location-aware applications have flooded the market.Those have now hit the mainstream market.Most of these applications focus on real-time or near-real-time location tracking, mobile resources, as well as visually displaying a dot or series of dots on a geographic map to indicate their position.Many people in the geospatial industry define tracking as limited to location awareness.However, there is much more to it than that. Location awareness is one important element of tracking.Equally important is the ability to track progress against a given schedule, compliance to predefined business rules, and status of jobs, as well as use rule-based alarms when job assignments are at risk due to delays or other unplanned events.

Consider the following example. At the beginning of a shift, field crews log in remotely (wirelessly or wired) and receive their pre-assigned and pre-sorted job assignments for an eight hour shift, with all the job details.Jobs can be sequenced based on location, best route or priority.By enabling remote access, field crews do not have to drive to the office to get their daily assignments and schedules. In addition, the crew's time is optimized by basing the new assignments on jobs closest to their current location. Once all jobs have been dispatched, field supervisors are able to manage their crews more efficiently since real-time information is readily available from the field. To best manage crews, field supervisors need to be able to:

Know the current location of field crews (mobile resources)

Have the current status of the crews

Compare the real-time information to the already assigned schedules

Automatically send alarms when resources are falling behind schedule or when critical jobs are at risk (delay risk)

Manage resources in an adaptive (reactive) mode - if an urgent unplanned job comes in, supervisors have the ability to quickly assign it to the right resource with the right equipment in the right location at the right time and know the impact to the currently assigned schedule

Be immediately informed when there is an emergency in the field

Keep a full audit trail for playback functionality when looking for process optimization or even investigation of accidents

Not too surprisingly, small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are driving demand for MRM. They have seen the complex GPS-based hardware- and software-tracking systems demonstrated at trade shows and want to enjoy the same gains in productivity and bottom line results without committing a disproportionate amount of their limited resources. Wireless network operators are rapidly responding. MRM services offer SMBs with 5 to 50 mobile workers the same competitive advantages that previously were available only to large companies with massive amounts of capital and the sheer critical mass to weather long, disruptive implementation processes.

So who are these SMBs? In general, they are service-oriented private companies, with a high percentage of mobile workers. In addition, the public sector, including public health, safety, and transportation, represents a significant counterpart in this market. SMBs count on their mobile workforce, to sell and deliver their goods and services to geographically dispersed customers. In the United States, an estimated 20 million mobile workers are employed by SMBs, representing over half the American mobile workforce. These businesses, which range from delivery services to warehousing operations, place a premium on efficiency, which contributes directly to customer satisfaction and profitability.

An example of the type of company that would reap the greatest benefits from deploying an MRM service is a privately held plumbing and heating contractor operating in one metropolitan area. The company might employ more than 50 technicians and more than 15 equipment trucks. It provides 24x7 emergency service in addition to installation, repair, and replacement services for commercial and residential customers. With location-based MRM, the company's dispatchers have the information they need—real-time locations of technicians and trucks as well as customer sites—all at their fingertips on their computers. The technicians have the information on their cell phones. With this data, the dispatchers can send the technician who is available and in closest proximity to the next service call extremely efficiently—if he or she hasn't already taken the initiative and gone to the customer site. No time is wasted checking back and forth between dispatchers and technicians to determine the best course of action. Plus, customers can be kept informed of a technician's arrival time up to the minute. Now that's a competitive advantage.

The same benefits hold true for any company that is transporting goods or people or providing services to customers in the field. This includes companies with several sales people making multiple calls every day. Specifically, the markets that are well served by MRM include police and fire departments, ambulance services, trucking companies, taxi and limousine services, courier and delivery services, beverage and food distributors, construction firms and building material suppliers, insurance companies, healthcare equipment suppliers, commercial laundries, auto dealerships, and large appliance and furniture retailers.

MRM takes advantage of companies’ existing computers for exceptional cost savings. To deploy an MRM solution, all a company needs is a PC, an Internet connection, and mobile phones. There is little to install, and MRM appears as just another line item on a company's monthly bill.

Using a simple, browser-based management system and obtaining a mobile worker’s location information from the wireless operator's network, company managers can determine who is closest to a customer or job site, send the most qualified of available employees, and track their progress. Managers can choose to receive alerts when a worker arrives at a given location, or enters or leaves a geographic zone. In addition, they can create reports of job status and route histories for individual workers and manage information sent to other groups inside the company. Using MRM, a manager can communicate with a worker or group of workers quickly by sending out a group text message.

MRM is easy to use. If you can surf the web, you're in business. Obviously, being in close communication with mobile workers is conducive to conducting business in an efficient manner. Using an MRM service increases operational efficiency and productivity for dispatchers and managers by providing critical information in a timely manner and streamlining communication with mobile workers. MRM can expedite changes in appointment times and work schedules as well as routes and destinations. Customer service problems can be addressed by the most qualified employee available, whether a call is for maintenance or an emergency. MRM also can assist workers in the field in locating the materials and tools they need for a specific job.

GPS MRM solutions provide functionality beyond the classic dots on maps or location information.An MRM solution allows an enterprise to best manage their field resources in time and space, adapt to real-time operational needs and provide real-time information of where their mobile fleet resources are now, where have they been, where they should be and how are they doing against their assigned schedules.Building an enterprise that extends its reach to the person in the field is the logical next step for an organization. Technology is available to make it happen.It makes sense to use all of your assets, not just the ones within the parameters of your office.