Allsport GPS Mobile App

Mobile Workforce Tracking For Time Critical Deliveries

Mobile Worker Solution To Public Sector Cost Reduction

As the bleak economic picture continues with tougher times likely to be still ahead, town hall councils and local authorities will be struggling to maintain the most cost efficient transportation departments as possible under the deepest budget cuts, and still plan for effective measures to deal with another possible severe winter ahead.

In addition, staggering rises in fuel prices will topload daily running costs and eat up barely sufficient budgets, creating a real urgency to find and operate real workflow solutions in an effort to keep key social services functioning in the community they serve.

It has become common practice for local authorities and public sector organisations to implement fleet tracking or mobile workforce tracking, which will not only reduce costs as a proven technology but is also a regulatory Duty Of Care measure. As a result, many council procurement officers who recognised commercial vehicle tracking systems as an industry standard tool across private fleet businesses instigated fleet GPS tracking to play a vital role as an integrated operational tool within their own public sector transport departments.

A vehicle fleet tracking system now forms an indispensable part of daily scheduling in key authority areas of responsibility including, building or pest control, waste management, refuse collection, cleansing or environmental services and parking enforcement.

In addition, the importance of a mobile worker solution, deployed strategically across both urban and rural environments, and where vital community services need to be always in operation, is critical for independent social services home visits, where mobile phone tracking can be invaluable. Another area of crucial operation is the emergency services, where a realtime vehicle tracking device is essential at all times.

Coping with the ever increasing severity of winter conditions, a specifically engineered winter maintenance system, which links with a standard vehicle tracking device provides local council and private contractor managers with advanced reports and greater, direct control of gritting fleets. Vehicle deployment in time sensitive response to changing weather conditions can be based on clear, measurable, detailed management information of flow rates, salt usage, and time/date history recording.

Planning for an extended tough economic climate ahead, there is, undoubtedly, considerable benefits to local authorities and public sector contractors for installing live vehicle tracking technology. Not only is there set into place compliance with Service Level Agreements (SLA's), key industry regulations, enhanced security and workforce duty of care, there is also much needed, invaluable mobile asset tracking management of vehicle location, route planning, availability and maintenance scheduling alerts.

Mobile Phone Tracking Globally

Today's traveller will take their mobile everywhere - to the most remote and sometimes the most dangerous places on earth. Mobile phone tracking systems can help a business to keep its employees safe as they travel but can they be relied on to work everywhere?

To answer this question we need to look a little deeper at the technology

1. GPS
GPS will work pretty much anywhere with one big proviso - the device has to have a view of the sky. So if the device is indoors, GPS is not going to work. Therefore any tracking application should have a fallback mode that uses cell-tower locations when GPS isn't available.

2. Mobile Comms
All mobile tracking applications have to send their tracking data back to a central point for it to be viewed. They will do this using a mixture of SMS or data (GPRS). Both transports need the phone to be in a coverage area, close enough to a cell-tower. If the phone can't make a call, it can't send the information. Therefore, in the areas of the world that are most remote, it's not going to be possible to get a regular feed of information from a mobile tracking phone. However, you should look for an application that continues to take location readings, storing them so that when it does return to coverage, it patches the missing information. The other alternative is to use a satellite device but SMS and data costs can quickly become prohibitive which leads onto the next point...

3. Mobile data costs
Mobile phone tracking is most useful when people travel the world - particularly to areas of high risk. However, many products are aimed at a single domestic country without much thought for use abroad. If your tracking phone is sending regular SMS and lots of data on a domestic SIM as you roam into other countries, this can become very, very expensive resulting in massive bill shock. Check that the tracking app you choose has the option to work on a global roaming SIM or at least a local SIM in the country where you spend most of your time.

4. Time-zones
Sounds a simple thing but if you're travelling the world you need a system that is aware of time-zones and local times. GPS tracking apps that have been developed for use in a single country are often restricted to showing all details in a single timezone which makes interpretation difficult.

So, in summary, there are mobile phone tracking applications that can be used anywhere in the world but they will all have unavoidable limitations. When making a choice, follow these guidelines to make sure you choose an option which is genuinely designed for global travel.