Vehicle Tracking System vs Route Planning and Scheduling Application

Any company with a fleet of vehicles wants to decrease costs on fuel and then profit. Generally, companies spend lots of money for vehicle tracking systems to cut expenses on fleet distances. However, it is very important that good planning helps companies to minimize their transportation costs and decrease mileages. When companies decrease distance for vehicles, they may also save environment with decreasing fuel. Companies try to solve that problem using vehicle tracking system in general. Companies believe that, having a vehicle tracking system installed in your fleet can significantly reduce the operational costs.

Surely, companies believe that tracking systems can reduce fuel costs in a number of ways which also brings additional benefits to your company. Moreover, when a vehicle tracking system is used, it transmits data and information about the location, speed, and status of the vehicle. Then, this information can be used to report analytics of the performed transportation activities.

Although there are some advantages of using vehicle tracking system, vehicle tracking systems are not enough to lower costs and to increase efficiency. Because, vehicle tracking systems do not give you an optimum plan, they just measure what’s going on. Vehicle tracking systems only provide information about vehicles and they help to keep their vehicles under control, or to track how the operation goes. They cannot give you optimized route plans or task schedules.  If the transportation (delivery/pick-up orcustomer visits) are not planned optimally, or planned inefficient, or manually, vehicle tracking systems won’t be so much useful in decreasing costs.

Companies should know that vehicle tracking systems only control vehicles during operation goes on. In order to increase efficiency, decrease costs and save time, route planning software should be used before using vehicle tracking systems. Route planning and schedulingapplications help you create optimum route plans and fleet schedules for all of the orders (delivery/pick-up, customer visits, etc.). They are also called by one of the following terms: vehicle route planner, vehicle routing software,routing optimization application, vehicle route optimization software, vehicle routingand scheduling, application, etc.

Companies that have fleet must operate optimum routes for those vehicles. Vehicle routing and scheduling applications are used to plan fleet route and schedule your orders, and gives you step by step delivery/pick-up/service directions before any operation. In this way, your business can decrease costs, save time while increasing efficiency in your operations.

In order to cut transportation & operational expenses, optimum routes, fleet tasks with step by step directions and to maximize customer satisfaction, a route planner should be used.

We want to increase awareness about route planning and scheduling applications in order to make organizations more efficient and so that they can serve much more customers at the same time. In this way they can profit more. We have a suggestion for companies that they should use vehicle tracking system with route planner software. In this way, they get an optimum route plan and then they can control vehicles using vehicle tracking system. They can measure their planned operation when applying to their vehicles. If they realize that they cannot be efficient enough, they can change their strategy. In this way, organizations create a chance to progress themselves continuously.

We would like to specify that we do not only emphasize to use route planner. Surely, they can use also vehicle tracking but there is an important point that we point out; vehicle tracking systems can be more effective after planning which is optimizing fleet routes, scheduling orders. Nowadays, vehicle tracking system manufacturers try to create perception on people’s mind that vehicle tracking systems reduce costs. However, it should be known that using vehicle tracking system will be not effective without route planningand scheduling.

There is another issue: Prices of those systems and their return on investment. Generally, organizations believe that using vehicle tracking system is not expensive as much as using route planner. It is absolutely wrong belief. We give our users an example to prove this belief is not true.

Let’s do simple math on a sample company case:

• Let’s say a company has 20 vehicles.
• Each vehicle’s distance is 20 km per day.
• Assume 10 km costs $1 fuel.
• So, 12000 km per month. 
• $1200 per month just for fuel.

Case 1: Company using only vehicle tracking system:

• At minimum, company spends $10 for each vehicle monthly for vehicle tracking system.
• So, vehicle tracking system costs the company $200 per month. 

Question:

• What will this company save on costs?
• Most probably, the answer is nothing.
• Can this company profit $200 by using vehicle tracking system only?
• Most probably, the answer is no. That amount may not be covered.

Case 2: Company using a route plannerapplication:

• Using logvrp, decreases costs around 20%.
• So, company can save approximately $240 per month.

As a result, if you use vehicle tracking system, you should also use route planning to be more efficient and effective and to reach more customers while maximizing customer satisfaction. It is certain that you may profit with using logvrp whether you use vehicle tracking or not. As a brief, think once more if you say: “I don’t need route planning. I already have a vehicle tracking system and I profit”

logvrp also helps you to:

• Decrease costs
• Save time
• Reduce mileages
• Increase customer satisfaction