When choosing a vehicle tracking company you must decide which one is going to best suit your needs. Cost obviously should be a consideration however to just take this into account would be the same as buying a car without test driving it first.

Nearly all tracking companies are different in ways that you may not notice. Here is a list of the differences that you may not be aware of.

Vehicle reporting time.

This is the time that the tracker sends the data back to the software. Obviously if it is more than 1 minute they you could miss vital data so make sure you have at least 30 second reporting. Some companies offering the cheapest cost on tracking will lower the reporting times and not tell you so be careful cheapest is not always the best.

Integration

Before you have the tracker installed and sign a long agreement you want to ask the vehicle tracking companies how well they integrate. What this means is how long do they spend with you setting the system up to your particular needs. All business is different and unique and if you do not have the system set up correctly you could be missing vital savings.

Logo

This may seem a small thing but does the company that you are looking at offer your logo on all the system and the reports. This gives you a more professional look and feel when sending presenting your reports to both employees and customers. Reports with your logo can include

Driver behaviour

Speeding and when and where they have been

Location reports

Time spent at customer locations

Timesheet reporting

Miles driven reports

And many more.

Google integration

Can the vehicle tracking system show you how long to the next location taking in to account traffic? This can be valuable as it stops you having to call drivers to see how long they will be. Think about it how long you have spent trying to find out how long they will be to the next location. This is now going to save you time and money.

Customer support

Let’s say you decide to go for a system that is a few euros cheaper than the next. The reality is a tracking system that is less than twenty euro a month is likely to have features that are not there that you will need. The support may be less and when things go wrong who pays for the issue to be rectified. Is there a cost for an engineer to call out? When you end your contract ask yourself do they charge the savings you have made then. As the old saying goes you get what you pay for

The whole package

One thing that a lot of fleet managers do not think about is future proof. If a new feature comes out is it updated automatically or is there a cost.