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Position Yourself For SuccessGlobal Positioning Systems are the roadmaps of the 21st century.
With increasing frequency, companies with field service operations are turning to the Global Positioning System (GPS), a satellite-based navigation system that can determine the location, speed and direction of a vehicle anywhere in the world. GPS is made up of a network of 27 satellites (24 in operation and three spares), which were placed into orbit by the U.S. Department of Defense in the late 1970s. The solar-powered GPS satellites circle the earth twice a day and use small rocket boosters to maintain a precise orbit. At any time, at least six satellites are in line with any point on Earth. To determine a location, a receiver locks into a satellite and reads its position in time and space. The detailed, accurate information available from GPS, along with its ability to maintain strong locks in otherwise poorly accessible areas, have made it jump in popularity for civilian use during the last 10 years. The trend has come to the petroleum equipment industry, as more and more distributors are turning to GPS technology to help improve their operations.
Northwest Pump & Equipment Company (Portland, OR) was among the first to embrace the technology, implementing GPS seven years ago. The company currently provides GPS to its 80 technicians spread across 13 branches. The ability to cover such a large area efficiently is one of the things that spurred Northwest Pump toward GPS technology. Vice President and Corporate Service Manager Bob Mathews says, “We realized that we didn't always know where everybody was. Plus, we have customers who call up and dispute how long our technician was at their site. With a GPS device, we can look and see exactly how long he was there.”
Mathews says the GPS also provides a myriad of other benefits. Northwest Pump sets up speed triggers, so anytime a vehicle goes over 60 mph, the dispatcher is alerted with an e-mail indicating the speed, the duration and the location of the event. Related to that, GPS is able to track the exact behavior of company drivers to help control insurance costs. “The most important use is making sure we're dispatching trucks correctly,” Mathews says. “We can ensure we are taking the most economical routes to customer sites. Also, we can track several trucks simultaneously to make sure vehicles aren't crossing paths and our dispatchers are doing a good job sending them where they need to go.” Northwest Pump's system is all Web-based, so learning the system requires minimal training that can be done online at no cost. “Once you learn which reports you want to track, it's very easy to use,” Mathews says. As with any asset, technicians make the most money when they are fully utilized. Therefore, Northwest Pump has its system set up with virtual boxes around the office and each technician's home in order to get reports about how much time the vehicle spends out of the field. “Within the first week, we found one employee who was spending four hours a day at the casino,” Mathews says. “Also, our trucks stopped zooming around on the weekends. All the trucks, except for that of the on-call technician, are parked where they should be.” One drawback Mathews points to is archiving the information. “It's
like saving old email; it can come back to haunt you. If I have
a record of bad driving from someone who later causes an accident,
that information could be used against me. We're pretty careful
about how we save that information from a liability standpoint.”
There is a cost associated with a switch to GPS, so Mathews suggests
diligently making sure that your dispatchers utilize the tool. “It's
an expensive service if you don't use it. Make it part of your culture
to facilitate what you do.”
“ONE OF THE BEST DECISIONS OUR COMPANY EVER MADE” At Guardian Fueling Technologies (Jacksonville, FL), service vehicles are removed from the fleet every 36 months. With a fleet of 100 vehicles, this practice can be costly. “The fleet really is a huge expense and a big liability for the company, but it's also our largest asset. Having all the control we can get has been really important for us,” says President/CEO Joey Batchelor.
That control is what led Guardian Fueling Technologies to install GPS on its fleet two years ago. “Increasing efficiency and providing better customer service by having the ability to rapidly deploy people to the closest next call not only saved us money internally but saved our customers money,” Batchelor says. “During the first quarter that we used the GPS, we were able to eliminate 20 percent of our unbillable overtime and our fuel bills came down 5 percent.” Batchelor says GPS comes in handy for time sheets and payroll, settling invoice disputes and handling emergency calls. Knowing exactly where the vehicle is and for how long without wasting time calling each person individually makes these tasks much easier. However, he also sees a benefit in GPS as a marketing tool. “We often have people come through our facility, and they like seeing the big flat-panel monitors with all 100 trucks in our fleet on it.” GPS can also be used as self-defense. “We've gotten phone calls on Monday mornings from people requesting that we pay for repairs to their vehicle because one of our trucks ran into them over the weekend and fled the scene,” Batchelor says. “We can go back and look at everywhere that vehicle was, and typically it was nowhere near where they said it was.” Along with the liability reduction, Guardian Fueling Technologies also saves money because employees no longer use company vehicles for personal use. Batchelor set up a geofence around each employee's residence that alerts management whenever the vehicle leaves the mapped parameters. “Being able to reduce the abuse of personal vehicle use after hours is where we've really saved money on our fuel bills,” Batchelor says.
That is what drew initial resistance from technicians when GPS was first implemented. “We ended up proving that the intention wasn't to watch them, though we do have the ability to,” Batchelor says. “We use it as a tool for our customers, management team and dispatchers.” After about 30 days of questions and complaints, employees began to see the benefit and the hullabaloo quieted down. As Batchelor recalls, “It became quite obvious to everyone that those doing the complaining were the ones who had something to hide.” Batchelor advises anyone who is looking for better control of their
fleet and labor expenses to seriously consider implementing GPS.
“When we look back at our decision to invest in GPS, we look
at that as probably one of the best decisions we've ever made as
a company,” Batchelor says. “It's benefited us in so many
ways. We sat around wondering why we didn't do it sooner.”
ACCIDENT PREVENTION REPAYS INVESTMENT Service Station Systems (San Jose, CA) began using GPS in service operations seven years ago in response to company growth. “As our business got bigger, it became tougher to remember where everyone was in the field,” says Service Coordinator Ryan Riley. “It also became inefficient for all of our technicians to come into the office everyday. We started seeing the brighter picture of having them start at their homes and work in those areas.” An initial trial of GPS in a half dozen vehicles indicated that use of the technology would solve these problems. Once GPS became the company standard, Service Station Systems received pushback from few employees, “but only from the guys with a tendency to misbehave,” says Riley. “It works out either way for us.”
GPS also has proven beneficial in other ways. “We had a couple vehicles stolen, and I was able to alert law enforcement about where to go to find the vehicle,” Riley recalls. “We recovered both vehicles as a result.” The recovery of those two assets more than paid for the expense of the technology, and the internal efficiencies the technology has provided are also good for the company. Each of the company's six dispatchers oversee about 10 to 15 of the company's 75 technicians, but the GPS allows better collaboration during an emergency. “When a customer calls in with a site down, we can just load up the map on the computer and see where the techs are,” Riley explains. “Even if the dispatcher who normally is responsible for a certain technician is tied up, all our dispatchers can see who the closest tech is to the emergency call and can dispatch that tech to take care of the customer.” The units at Service Station Systems are all tucked underneath the dashboard and do not require any driver interface. No training is required for the drivers, and the dispatchers only must be able to click a mouse. “It's pretty simple,” Riley says. “Employees wouldn't know it was there if we didn't tell them.” Service Station Systems also uses GPS for daily time card tracking.
Employees turn in their time cards to the human resources department,
who verify if employees actually were where and when they said they
were. The company has a rule that vehicles are not allowed to travel
above a certain speed. If they do go faster than the allotted speed,
the GPS unit sends an automatic e-mail to the office. “Depending
on the severity and frequency of offenses, the employee can be warned,
written up, suspended or fired,” Riley says. “Since we
implemented that policy, our number of vehicle accidents has dropped
dramatically to the point that we haven't had one in a few years.”
GPS HELPS RECOVER STOLEN VEHICLE For the last three years, Petroleum Solutions (San Antonio, TX) has used GPS on its vehicles for service, construction and heavy machinery. John Keller, vice president and branch manager, recalls, “We looked at it for several years and were really on the fence. The thing that really drove us to install it was time cards for our field personnel.” The system used by Petroleum Solutions features an interactive keypad, so technicians are able to clock in and out per job and per day.
With 45 Petroleum Solutions' field technicians spread across six branches, GPS is a vital tool for dispatching purposes. The company also uses GPS to provide detailed reports for customers. “Our customers are so big that sometimes they aren't aware of our presence on the job site,” Keller explains. “With GPS, we can validate exactly when we're there.” Keller relates a story about when a construction crew was working out of town and had a truck, trailer and Bobcat stolen from the hotel parking lot. “Our men were aware of it in the evening and called their supervisor, who was able to inform the authorities where it was. It was recovered that same night, and we were back at work the next day. The customer never knew the difference.” Another benefit came during the winter when a van had an accident on any icy road. Keller was able to provide detailed data to the insurance company proving that the driver of the vehicle was not speeding or doing anything reckless. “Being able to pull that report saved us some grief about whether they would pay for the vehicle or not,” Keller says.
Petroleum Solutions uses GPS on its heavy equipment, which allows it to track actual usage time on the equipment at a job site. The unit incorporates a remote switch to kill the ignition, meaning that nobody else can use the equipment while it is on the job site. “That way we can keep better track of our depreciation schedule and get our costs done correctly,” Keller says. Despite all the advantages GPS provides the company, Keller can still understand the hesitancy of some distributors. “It really depends on the size of the company and the cost benefit. I don't think it's for everybody,” he says. “Plus, we had some problem with technicians believing that we were invading their privacy to some degree—they nicknamed it 'Spytracker.'” The company was able to work through that, and Keller says the pros outweigh the cons. He's not alone. “A rep from a major oil company told us that he wouldn't be surprised if it was required in the near future for all their service providers to have GPS.” |
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