A lot of field service businesses are feeling the pressure to install GPS tracking into their trucks. But the question that occurs to me, as a previous irrigation business owner, is what does GPS tracking do for you? Or better yet, what do you hope to get out of GPS tracking?
There are some common answers we hear when we ask potential customers why they want GPS tracking, so let’s examine those:
Bread Crumbs: Many times we hear that owners or managers want the GPS tracking to allow them to see where their techs went in a day. In other words, they want to follow the bread crumbs of the trucks. In theory, this isn’t a terrible idea, but again you need to ask yourself, why am I following the bread crumbs of every company truck?
This is a time consuming task. You have enough balls to juggle in one day without following the routes of every single truck. Not to mention what happens when your company starts to grow and you have more than three or four trucks.
Having to check on your trucks and the crews seems like there may be a lack of trust when it comes to your employees getting to the sites and getting the job done. If you have trouble trusting your employees to do the job you are paying them for, no amount of money or devices will really help. You should focus on building a strong core of employees instead of needing to babysit their every move.
Real Time Location: Another feature that field service companies use GPS tracking for is real time location data. If an emergency call comes in, you can see exactly where your trucks are and send over the closest one.
This is actually a pretty good feature, if you get a lot of emergency calls. I can see this being more useful for those in plumbing, HVAC, or alarm industries. For those in the lawn care industry, however, emergencies do not come up that often. Most appointments can wait to be scheduled on another day. The real time location is useful for certain industries with frequent emergency calls but for the day to day service calls, it is not a practical feature.
Geo Fencing: When it comes to being an over analyzing owner, I think of geo-fencing. With this feature, you mark the properties so that once a truck enters the “fence” you know they made it to the site.
By needing to know the exact moment a truck crosses onto the customer’s property, there seems to be the same issue of trust as with the bread crumbs theory above. By needing to know exactly when a truck is on site, there seems to be more issues to work out than what a GPS tracker can provide.
But did you know if you have lawn care software you don’t need to add on this extra expense? Lawn care software can make your crews accountable, without being over the top with analyzing routes and times and locations. For starters, you can route your techs based on the most efficient path. This allows you to know (not to the exact minute) where your guys are throughout their day. You are also able to have them time in and out and with that, their location at the time they time in and out can be seen.
Whether you go with a GPS tracking system, a lawn care software system, or both, you need to ask yourself, “What am I getting out of this?” If it is more stress and more use of your valuable time retracing your techs’ steps, you may want to reevaluate your business as a whole. If it can be used in a positive way to better the business, it will be a good buy.
Curious about other things you could be doing within your business that may be hurting it? Check out the 33 Stupid Things Contractors Do (And How to Fix Them) and learn from your mistakes.
