Landscape Insight September 2018 | Page 16

QUARTIX ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE WORKFORCE PRODUCTIVITY: WHAT MAKES A GOOD GPS TRACKING SYSTEM? I f a GPS system helped you take on one extra job per week, and if overtime payments could be reduced by a couple of hours per week, what would your return be per employee?” Landscape contracting is labour intensive. With many vehicles, drivers and sites to manage, and customers spanning a wide radius, a popular tool for improving workforce productivity is GPS tracking. A good tracking system doesn’t just tell you where your vehicles are, it provides information that is directly relevant to your business operations. The following points will help you choose a system with the strongest reporting capabili- ties: 16 Which reports will I need to improve productivity and operating costs? Accurate timesheets teamed with late arrival and early departure alerts will reduce undue overtime claims and ensure your customers get the hours of service that they pay for. Matt O’Conner, manag- ing director of John O’Conner Grounds Maintenance advises “Quartix vehicle tracking lets you take control of your fleet, improve operational efficiency and manage costs, safety and time.” For park supervisions, tracking reports provide proof of attend- ance and the data is useful when handling customer queries. Quar- tix vehicle tracking APIs allow you to feed all these valuable reports into your own business systems, including payroll. The data should Landscape Insight | September 2018 “A good tracking system doesn’t just tell you where your vehicles are, it provides information that is directly relevant to your business operations.” be accessible by any team, with the ability to drill down into individu- als or groups of drivers and create custom reports. In landscaping, managers are often out of the office, so it’s also useful if reports can be accessed via email and on a mobile device. Which reports can iden- tify actions needed to lower fuel costs? To help your drivers become more fuel efficient, you must know how your vehicles are being driven. Reports that include daily route logs, driving style reports with acceleration and braking metrics and geofencing alerts to flag unauthorised journeys and unwar- ranted use of company fuel can help. “It doesn’t happen often, but if a driver does use our vehicle at a