Have you ever wondered how food, electronics or any other products gets onto the sales floor? You might have done actually and you probably imagine that it usually comes by ships, trains and trucks. However, it is usually way more complicated than it looks like. Managing hundreds or even thousands of vehicles does not only require huge human efforts, but also very sophisticated and up to date transport management systems.

What do transport management systems do?

Transport management system usually has more functions than tracking vehicles and reporting their locations. Sophisticated transport management systems sometimes can be partly responsible for cargo delivery time. How come? Modern fleet management systems do not only track a number of vehicles, but also suggest alternative routes in case of unexpected or unplanned events. In addition, knowing exact vehicles location and estimated delivery time businesses can inform their clients or customers in advance about late deliveries and provide exact information when they should arrive.

Ensuring effectiveness and safety

Transport management systems also help to significantly improve business effectiveness. After installing specific trackers, such information as driving behavior, fuel consumption and temperature can be monitored. This allows monitoring every driver and evaluating his/her effectiveness as well as productivity. Monitoring hundreds of people used to be a real challenge for logistic companies. Therefore, introducing sophisticated fleet management softwares to the market was a big revolution. Of course, it wasn’t such good news for the drivers who were not so willing to be tracked every single kilometer of their journey. However, tracking does not only ensure increasing company’s profitability, but drivers’ safety as well. Such safety features as drivers’ registration and identification, remote ignition blocking, emergency buttons made drivers feel way safer when traveling.

The largest scale possible

Fleet management systems may not only help tracking vehicles on the road. Large logistic companies usually need to track planes, trains, ships as well as trucks. Of course, this scale of tracking usually combines a few different solutions and softwares. When managing huge number of transport as well as people a lot of decisions has to be made quickly and usually there is no room for human error. That is why some of the most innovative fleet management systems are also able to prioritize shipments, ensuring maximum efficiency and profitability.     

There is nothing impossible and, you might say, that logistic companies were successfully operating even when vehicle tracking was utopia. Yes, they did. However, only the most sophisticated technology managed to transfer this industry to another level. Another scale.  Another profitability. 

References:

Dale Willis, Director of Product Marketing, Ensuring fleet and driver safety: how technology helps service business adhere to regulations and protect employees.

Ruptela, 2016-01-23, Transportation management system and software

Fleetnews.co.uk, 2012-07-10, Telematics: The science of vehicle tracking