GPS Helps Plumbing Contractors Find Their Way

Plumbing contractors who want to expand their business or maintain an advantage in a competitive market would be wise to heed the words of the late steel baron Andrew Carnegie: “Watch costs and profits take care of themselves.”

Managing a business with a fleet of vehicles means, ceding control over some of your business efficiency and costs to employees. By implementing a global positioning system (GPS) to track your fleet of vehicles, you can lower the cost of doing business, as well as help your operation run more efficiently.

“There are people who simply trust their guys and feel like they would never implement a solution like this…because they believe the information people are giving them is accurate,” says Jeff Gisriel, an account executive for Salisbury, Md.-based Navtrak, Inc., a company that provides GPS tracking for fleet management. “Essentially, [a GPS system] removes blindfolds from managers, dispatchers and payroll clerks.”

GPS may seem like an intrusion of employee privacy, but in reality it can be an effective tool for getting the most out of your fleet. For instance, a vehicle tracking system allows dispatchers to know exactly where each vehicle is located, where it’s going and how it got there. This knowledge can help you in a variety of ways, from providing better customer service to saving money on the cost of gas, says Wayne Johnson, vice president of sales and marketing for Discrete Wireless, a GPS fleet management solutions company in Roswell, Ga.

According to Johnson, cost reductions come from the efficiency that a GPS system can provide. Because dispatchers know exactly where the fleet’s vehicles are at all times, the dispatcher can direct the closest vehicle to a customer site, he says. In addition, if a customer disputes a bill, the GPS system can be used to re-trace the technician’s steps and confirm or disprove the hours billed to the client. “It’s one of those things where you’re adding something up in black and white,” Johnson says. “Most of the construction and service companies really haven’t thought about their business in that way.”

The cost of implementing a vehicle tracking system ranges from $300 to $500 per vehicle to install the GPS device, in addition to a monthly subscription fee for a Web-based software solution, which typically costs up to $50 per month.

If a company has a larger operation with other software systems—such as accounting, timesheets or dispatching—the cost of implementing and integrating GPS software will increase. According to Johnson, the professional services required to do the integration can cost about $1500 per day. But after everything is installed, both Gisriel and Johnson agree that companies do not require additional employees to manage the system. “There’s not really a need to add an employee. It really enhances the roles that internal employees have already,” Gisriel says.

After the vehicle tracking system is installed, the next hurdle is convincing employees of the value. “You may have senior employees who have been there for 25 years who are kicking the tires a little bit, saying ‘This is wrong, why are you tracking me now?’” Gisriel says. “But that ‘Wow’ or shock factor soon wears off.”