One of the more advanced features of a GPS tracking system is the ability to create geofences with triggered alerts.
What are geofence alerts?
Geofences are designated areas that you can define on a map. They can either be a certain radius around a single point or any shape that you create from several points. You might create geofences around neighborhoods you want to avoid, customer sites, your own office campus, employee homes, or any other area you want to monitor. Triggered alerts allow you to monitor activity in a more passive manner. Rather than constantly watching the real-time map, you can just get alerted whenever a geofence is crossed. You can also use geofences with timestamps, which let you view previous activity any time after it happens.
Using Geofence Alerts with a GPS Tracking System
As a fleet manager or small business owner, you can use geofences to send triggered alerts and provide timestamps for activities such as:
Entering or Exiting Job Sites – Have you ever called a job site to check in with an employee only to find out that they didn’t show up when they were scheduled to arrive? Setting up a geofence around customer job sites can help you avoid this and other sticky situations. Geofence alerts increase your fleet tracking efficiency.
Arriving or leaving work – You’re not always in the office when your employees arrive and depart, so you can’t verify time sheets unless you have another method of tracking their activity. Setting up a geofence around the area where company vehicles are kept will help you keep an eye on attendance and you will always know which vehicles are in the field and which ones are not.
Managing territories – If you use your GPS tracking system to monitor a sales force with designated territories, geofences with triggered alerts can help you better manage your team and prevent intentional or unintentional encroachment.
Keeping employees out of certain areas – If you don’t want your employees or your vehicles to be in a certain area, set up a triggered alert to let you know when they enter a geofence. This can help you protect your assets and improve driver accountability.
Are you ready to learn more? Talk to a Fleet Advisor today.
Remember that geofences are not the only GPS tracking system feature you can use with triggered alerts. Landmarks work in a similar way, but rather than a geographical perimeter, a landmark simply represents a single site. For example, if a job site is a single building, it might make more sense to use a landmark. On the other hand, if the site encompasses several blocks or a larger area, a geofence would provide you with more valuable information.
iTracker offers GPS tracking system solutions with geofences and a broad range of other helpful features to help you take control of your fleet. View our customer success stories to see how other businesses use fleet GPS to improve operations and save money.
Learn about geofencing and how to use it to your fleet’s advantage with zones and rules in ITracker.
Geofencing for vehicles is the act of creating and defining virtual boundaries that trigger a specific action when a vehicle equipped with a GPS fleet tracking device, like the Geotab GO device, is within, entering or exiting that defined area. Geofencing is an important tool for fleet managers as it supports the monitoring of vehicle activity in a specific area and receiving alerts based on pre-defined behaviors, whether expected or not.
To learn more about how to use geofencing for your fleet vehicles, we have compiled all the information you need to know about geofencing in general as well as how to use it in the ITracker fleet management software.
