GPS Tracking ROI

Ask most of my American, Australian or European readers to sum up their thoughts on Indai and you are likely to get such comments as “Third-world” country, poor, backwards and so on. GPS Tracking for Business is unlikely to be in their first response.  Highly unlikely.

Yet the number of news items I get on a weekly basis telling me about new, widesprad and innovative methods of using GPS tracking to help the bottom line of business and government is really astounding.

For every time I see a US-based news item about some luxury gold course or another buying a GPS for their gold carts I’ll see two or three “meaty” reports about government agencies and businesses in Indai putting GPS tracking to use and making it not only pay for itself, but add profit to boot.  Example:

CHENNAI: The state government has set up a modern control room at the state traffic planning cell (STPC) office on Kamarajar Salai to monitor the 122 GPS-enabled police patrol vehicles deployed along the national highways across the state.

“The new system will help the police patrol vehicles to reach the accident spot within two minutes of the incident. The movement of patrol vehicles will be monitored round the clock from the STPC office. Our main aim is to reduce the deaths due to road accidents,” state
minister KN Nehru told The Times Of India. He was talking to mediapersons after attending a review meeting to gauge the effectiveness of its initiatives to reduce the number of accidents in the state… full GPS tracking success story article here.

Now with all our “inventive genius, “first world” financial skills (oh, well maybe not) business acumen, education and so on, how come you have never read a story like this about your state or your city or business?

A bit mind boggling, isn’t it?  There has never been a better time to make GPS Tracking pay for itself.

I’ve posted a number of times here on the GPS Tracking ROI blog regarding the use of anonymous aggregated tracking data to save time and fuel in traffic prediction and reporting systems.  see GPS Benefits For Non-GPS Drivers or Are You Being Tracked? And No, I’m Not Just Talking GPS for a few other ideas.

Keeping track of individual vehicles or individual fleets is the primary purpose of GPS Tracking.

But when you have hundreds or even thousands of vehicles reporting their locations and speed you have a real-world proof of how traffic is flowing and where:

Smooth Start for I-95 Traffic Network

GPS is being put to use along Interstate 95 from New Jersey to North Carolina in what USA Today calls “the most ambitious use of technology to combat traffic congestion.”The system, which could become a model for other high-traffic highways, gives drivers real-time traffic information to help them anticipate delays. Data will be collected from more than 800,000 GPS devices on delivery vans, trucks, taxicabs and other service vehicles, from sensors embedded in the roadways, from toll tag data such as EZ Pass, and from cellphones.

The information will be sent within three minutes to state transportation departments that will then alert drivers via road signs, 511 phone systems, mobile alerts, and the Internet. The system will enable officials to get more detailed information to a broader audience. As reported in the February 1 GPS World’s Navigate! newsletter, Inrix Inc. will collect the data under a $1 million contract with the 16-state I-95 Corridor Coalition.

Once again, GPS World comes through reporting on the things that count in the world of GPS Tracking and business advantages.

A few days ago I did one of my semi-regular shout outs to show my appreciation for the folks who advertise here on the GPS Tracking ROI blog.  As luck would have it, another valued member just joined the club …

Thanks. Land Sea Air GPS Tracking Systems.  I did a full review on this company’s products a short time back, you can read more about them here.

If you want to see your company’s products reviewed or featured here, just visit our advertising page or leave me a note via our 100% spam-free contact page.

We also have third party ads on this site from various parties that are supplied by Google.  In a technical field like this one, GPS Tracking, these can be a service to readers.  If you have a company or service that you want to be seen all across the Internet for a very reasonable, controllable price (you pay only when people click), then we highly recommend Google AdWords to get you property in front of thousands of qualified prospects. Target a specific audience. Get Google AdWords.

If you have a website you would like to make a profit from, while serving up your visitors unique, highly subject related advertisements, you can not do better than Google AdSense This site monetized by Google AdSense

Everyone who reads my articles here regularly (and, by the way, if you aren’t already a subscriber, may I ask you, as a personal favor, to just click on this link and subscribe?  It would be of benefit to both of us, thanks) knows that I focus on ways that GPS tracking can improve a business’s bottom line … how you get a return on an investment in specific technology.

Many readers who come here from search engine queries, though, are interested in the more drama-related aspects of GPS … things like tracking and errant spouse of girl friend.  There was even a spoof article which made the rounds a month or so ago about a company selling a device that could be attached to a woman’s panties and would not only send their location from time to time but sound an alarm if they were removed.  A joke, I hope, for at least the foreseeable future.  But for how long?  I don’t know.

We here’s a company who has a proven rate of return on their investment in GPS tracking technology and their specific application is tracking women’s lingerie … and expensive, sexy lingerie at that.  So far I think they have limited the use to tracking before the panties are worn, but ….

Ann Summers tracking increases delivery efficiency

Posted by Miya Knights at 3:59PM, Wednesday 13th February 2008

GPRS tracking technology is helping the lingerie retailer improve customer service and increase operational efficiency in time for one of its busiest trading periods, Valentine’s Day.

Ann Summers, the UK lingerie and adult novelties company, is using web-based satellite tracking services for its entire fleet of delivery vehicles in time for Valentine’s Day.

The online telematics service from Masternaut gives real-time visibility of the company’s fleet. The capability enables it to pinpoint the movements of individual vehicles and improve customer service to the point of home delivery. By doing so, it is also looking to reduce costs and increase operating efficiencies.
Mick O’Neil, Ann Summers transport and fleet manager told IT PRO the company wanted to install an up-to-date tracking system to eliminate "grey areas" from its view of delivery operations.

"With the service we can clarify if a driver attended a delivery address if a customer queries it. We can use the wait times to properly track anything like parking fines. And it is helping us track shift times better, as well as ensuring that our drivers are taking breaks and so on," he said… full panties tracking article here

Funny thing is, just before I sat down to write this article I was watching a ‘true crime" show about a mastermind who stole millions of dollars per year from the fashion industry and was only ever caught because of some mistakes he made in his personal life … his crimes were no closer to police detection years after he started them than on the day he started.  If you don’t think that pilferage of easy to resell luxury articles is a very real risk, you have a lot to learn about business.  Add in the other benefits mentioned like detecting labor hours fraud, personal safety of distribution personnel and oh yes, something pretty important in today’s world … customer satisfaction … and Ann Summers is getting a great return on investment from their effort in tracking panties.  Shouldn’t you be tracking panties as well?

Vehiclepath Customer Recognizes Return on GPS Investment in Less than Four Weeks

San Diego, CA (PRWEB) February 11, 2008 — Armour Guard Products, a Fort Lauderdale, FL based company that manufactures and delivers a full line of car care products had drivers that were taking too long to make deliveries and the companies’ fuel consumption was extremely high. They purchased and installed Vehiclepath™ GPS fleet tracking units and didn’t tell any of their drivers they were tracking their delivery routes. Armour Guard recognized cost savings that more than paid for their GPS investment in a couple of weeks.

"Without GPS tracking we had no clue where our drivers were at, why deliveries weren’t on time and why we were spending so much money in fuel," said Victor Mecca, President of Armour Guard Products. "Our goal was to find a better way to manage routes so our customers would get their deliveries on time and our office manager would know where a specific driver was quickly."

They installed a Vehiclepath GPS tracking unit on a drivers’ truck that was routinely late and within a few days they quickly discovered what was happening. The driver would speed through his route and then drive 50-60 miles out of his way to go home for a couple of hours and then speed back to finish his deliveries. …. read more here or visits the VehiclePath site here.

You’ve heard this from me before.  And with gas at $3 a gallon, you’re going to hear more from me …. until you get the message and start getting your business on track.

When you read the press release you may think, "Oh yeah, written by a salesman, isolated incident, etc., etc."

Well I am not selling anything.  And I’m here to testify to you that stories like the errant driver mentioned by Mr. Mecca are not rare at all … they are the sometimes the rule rather than the exception.  If you want to see your fuel bills and labor costs drop dramatically, get a decent GPS tracking system on your vehicles and use it.  You will not be sorry, I can guarantee that.

Monday, 11 February 2008
YARMOUTH, Maine - DeLorme, a long-time leader in affordable GIS innovation, today announced the release of Public Land Survey System (PLSS) data for use in all current versions of XMap, their GIS software.

These free downloadable Openspace GIS layers display township, range, and section boundaries for each of the 30 states covered by the PLSS. Derived from a variety of sources, including the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Geological Survey, and state GIS agencies, the data has been processed into a consistent and easy-to-use format… read more here, including a nice capsule description of the PLSS

One of the things that made America great and certainly differentiates us from other countries with large land areas is the Public Land Survey System (PLSS).  Instead of waiting for surveys to make their way to each parcel of land here and there as the population moved westward our government used foresight and invested public funds in surveying the land ahead of time .. marking off lines of latitude and longitude and carving up the wide open spaces into standardized units that could describe tracts of land from a tiny garden plot to a huge ranching empire.

You’ve all seen this system if you’ve flown over the mid-west and west … the long (almost) parallel lines of ’section line roads’, the checkerboard grid of farms and towns and the slicing angles of railroads and Interstates that chose not to follow the lines.  It truly is a remarkable piece of American enterprise and history.

There’s a small problem, though.  The surveyors of 100 years and more in the past used the best instruments and techniques they had, but today PLSS features and property descriptions do not always match up with modern GPS-based maps.

I chased communication cables across the plains of the Northern Tier for years, wishing there was a way to get all the data onto one map.  This has long been one of those "keys to the kingdom" issues I have mentioned often in the past … where holders of the information … sometimes even public entities … wanted to keep what they had locked away from others … the "it’s Our data" syndrome.  believe me, it has hurt a lot of GIS and GPS development ideas.

Hat’s off to DeLorme for breaking yet another log jam.  Information yearns to be free, needs to be free, and little by little we’re getting there.

Sorry I didn’t see this for a couple days.  Just a note to update a previous post of mine about the latest and greatest GPS satellite added to the GPS constellation:

November 5, 2007
The modernized Global Positioning System Block IIR (GPS IIR-M) satellite, launched from Cape Canaveral on Oct. 17, has been declared fully operational for military and civilian navigation users around the globe, following a successful on-orbit checkout by a combined U.S. Air Force/Lockheed Martin team.
The satellite, designated GPS IIR-17M, is the fourth in a series of eight Block IIR-M satellites that bring new capabilities to military and civilian users of the GPS system. Each GPS IIR-M satellite features a modernized antenna panel that provides increased signal power to receivers on the ground, two new military signals for improved accuracy, enhanced encryption and anti- jamming capabilities for the military, and a second civil signal that will provide users with an open access signal on a different frequency…  Full press release on this new satellite for the GPS constellation here:

17M was only launched on the 17th of October.  In 19 days (including weekends and holidays)  it’s filly tested, “burned-in” and declared operational.  May not sound like much to you, but it sounds like a lot to me.  I’ve been around space launch for nearly 30 years.  It used to take weeks and months for a “new bird” in any system to come on-line.  Even commercial, profit-oriented satellite launch corporations (who, by the way, normally depend on Air Force launch facilities and the Air Force Satellite Control Network to get their birds aloft and into orbit to begin with) very seldom equal the kind of time line the USAF and their support contractors now routinely achieve.  My hat is off to the team, it’s no small feat and it all to often goes unnoticed.

Won’t be long before you are getting ready to file those income taxes.  (If you use GPS tracking you’ll pay less, by the way), and no one likes to pay taxes … so when you are moaning at the size of the bite Uncle Sam is taken out yet again, remember that some of your government agencies are working hard to give you a great ROI (Return On Investment).