As new challenges emerge surrounding the logistics and safety of business fleets in the COVID-19 era, it is important to be able to quickly and accurately locate vehicles and their drivers and goods in order to protect them in COVID-19 high-risk zones. Not only are more commercial vehicles on the roads, but also government lockdown measures and continued virus transmission present hurdles to drivers and their cargo.
Geofencing refers to a suite of new technologies that enable better tracking and assistance for commercial drivers. These technologies include the definition of geographical zones, navigation tracking, and vehicle activity logging. By virtually mapping zones, then automatically sending information or logging activity depending on the zone, geofencing empowers you to better monitor and protect your business, drivers and assets.
Here are five steps to use geofencing for improved monitoring and protection of your drivers and assets to ensure optimal operation during covid-19:
Step 1: Customise Your Geo Zones
Geofencing is just what it sounds like: a virtual “fence” linked to the boundaries of a geographic area. The first step is to identify geo zones that reflect your service areas, areas that may present logistical challenges, and high-risk areas.
Geofencing tools allow fleet managers to set your own zones by zooming in from a satellite view and drawing a border around the geographic area. Identifying and tracking your geo zones also allows you to better assess service demand in a given area, as well as any factors that could impair your fleet’s performance. And of course, you can assess your drivers’ risk for COVID in a given geographic area and optimise the utilisation of the vehicles accordingly.
Step 2: Monitor Vehicles in High-Risk Areas
After you have identified “high-risk” areas based on various factors, you can now keep close tabs on drivers’ activity and efficiency within high-risk zones. With an enormous amount of visibility, you can monitor idle time and driver behaviour, then use the data to train drivers be more safety aware, and reduce overall risk to your assets.
The real time data allows you to monitor vehicle activity in each area to better understand the demand and any factors affecting performance in these zones. During the COVID-19 era, you can also use the resulting data for contact tracing and risk assessment.
Step 3: Receive Alerts When Events Trigger
iFleet’s geofencing technology allows fleet managers to choose when to receive a trigger — when the driver enters the area, exits, or both. Triggers can also be set for when drivers enter those areas during non-scheduled hours or exceed the allotted amount of time in those areas.
You can easily monitor all the forbidden/high-risk areas and get notified by SMS, email, or smartphone push notification when your predefined events are triggered.
Step 4: Analyse the Geofencing Reports and Alerts
With instant alerts and the ability to remotely disable vehicles or access vehicle data, you can easily optimize your fleet’s operations and prevent any suspicious activity from taking place. You can keep track of drivers’ times and path history to see how that affects operational costs. The data you obtain using geofencing tools allows you to better compare and measure productivity, as well as make arrangements to address the increased demand for services.
Step 5: Take Immediate Actions to Improve Operations
Finally, by utilising the valuable data in your hands, you can start addressing the operational and safety issues you discover and implement process improvements to prevent future security breaches by your drivers and minimize exposure of your drivers to COVID-19 and other threats by minimizing drivers’ times in those areas.
In other words, by using a geofencing tool, you can maximise operational efficiency while ensuring the safety of your drivers and assets.
Using Geofencing for Better Business Protection
Geofencing is an invaluable tool that can help fleet managers keep better track of their assets in the predefined areas. By placing everything under their remote control, geofencing tools enable you to manage and monitor your drivers and their cargo for optimal vehicle utilisation, risk mitigation, and security monitoring.
iFleet offers comprehensive GPS tracking, remote vehicle management, and geofencing solutions for optimized fleet management. Used by major companies to enable the top performance and efficiency of their fleets, iFleet is a comprehensive tool for remote fleet management and vehicle optimization.
