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Tip #5: Minimal Investment

Take full advantage of your existing mobile assets with no additional investment. Mobile phones are carried daily and everywhere; they’re a piece of hardware the employee already owns or the company has provided. Without having to purchase an entirely new, expensive product, companies can easily use a mobile tracking application for its GPS devices. For a small monthly fee, companies can keep their employees safe and their assets secure, while improving overall efficiency.

Cross Posted from http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Management/How-to-Make-LocationBased-Applications-Work-for-Your-Enterprise/ Jaap Groot

Tip #4: Security

From appliances to equipment, if it is portable, it can be stolen. Companies can easily monitor their assets, as well as recover stolen or missing items, using GPS technology. GPS technology allows you to create virtual fences and alerts you when something leaves an area. Security guards and video cameras are expensive and only partially helpful. You will never have to waste money on replacing missing equipment when you can simply track it down.

Cross Posted from http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Management/How-to-Make-LocationBased-Applications-Work-for-Your-Enterprise/  Jaap Groot

Tip #3: Peace of Mind

There is great relief in knowing that employees and assets will get to a destination safely and on time. Enterprises can know immediately when employees are speeding, are late to a destination, or are simply driving in an irresponsible manner. Employees can have access to a “panic button” should an emergency occur. Employers will instantly know where to provide immediate assistance, whether legally required to do so or not. If your company provides services to end users, think of the power of location when needed in an emergency and the value-add to your company’s offering.

Cross Posted from: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Management/How-to-Make-LocationBased-Applications-Work-for-Your-Enterprise/ Jaap Groot

See previous posts for part 1: http://www.tracerpropak.com/2008/09/making-gps-cell-phone-tracking-work-for-you/ 

Tip #2: Improve Customer Satisfaction

Many enterprises deploy mobile installation and repair work forces. Customers can be alerted when support is within a certain distance, rather than wait during a lengthy window. Jobs can be done more quickly, as employee on-the-job calls are reduced (that is, they don’t have to report in their location and ETA). Likewise, dispatchers can manage bigger groups of resources by not having to make inefficient voice calls to individuals regarding their location.

Cross Posted from http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Management/How-to-Make-LocationBased-Applications-Work-for-Your-Enterprise/  Jaap Groot

You can save a lot of money just by knowing where your people and equipment are at any given point in time, according to Jaap Groot, CEO of FindWhere. Even better, you don’t necessarily have to spend a lot of money doing it since many cell phones and smart phones already come equipped with GPS receivers. All you have to do is enable it for your use. Groot explains how.
In a volatile economic environment, companies are looking to enterprise IT systems to reduce costs and increase operational efficiency. Location-enabled mobile phones offer a great series of management applications that can be integrated through enterprise IT systems. GPS receivers on smart phones and Web-based applications are making these technologies much more accessible to the smaller enterprise.

Location applications already have a reputation for saving large enterprises money. Yet the type and breadth of these applications-and their capabilities-continues to be unclear. This is in large part because GPS-enabled smart phone systems are only now becoming widely available, and software has been complex and expensive.

This article features five empowering tips for using location-based services to your advantage, based on my personal experience running two location-based services companies. Investment can be significant, depending on the size of the enterprise. But any cost or operation-oriented GPS application should provide return on investment well within six months.

The following five tips will help you better leverage your enterprises’ existing smart phones for innovative, location-based enterprise applications.

Tip #1: Companies Can Save Money

Companies save millions by using GPS tools to help reduce fuel costs and increase productivity. Fuel costs have become an absolute nightmare in the past few months in the United States. The cost of keeping vehicles on the road is increasing at an unprecedented rate.

A GPS tracking solution can save companies money by reducing unauthorized evening and weekend use of vehicles, optimizing job assignments based on location, reducing discretionary time and overtime hours, and monitoring to ensure that the most efficient routes are being used. In addition to gas costs, consider the fact that less mileage equals less vehicle maintenance.

Additionally, companies can use GPS to identify nonperformers through a location trail of assets, including employees who are not making efficient runs. This allows companies to explore better efficiencies for work force management.

Remaining Tips to be posted shortly: Check back.

Cross posted from http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Management/How-to-Make-LocationBased-Applications-Work-for-Your-Enterprise/ , Jaap Groot

We asked small business owners like you what types of challenges they faced in a slow economy coupled with rising costs.  Of the many things you described, we grouped the challenges that we could solve into 3 categories:

1. “When my technicians are out in the field, they are under billing:  For example, if they spent 1 hour and 45 minutes at a client, they are reporting back 1 hour and 30 minutes.  I can’t be sure how much of this is going on, but I can guarantee that it happens.  With 18 technicians, if a quarter of them did this every week, it is costing me a fortune in lost revenue.”
2. “My technicians do not show up on time.  Often, this is because the previous job ran late and it just causes a domino effect which hits customer service.  Customer service is critical right now because my competitors are dropping their prices to get business.”
3. “It takes 20 hours every week to take the paper tickets from my field technicians and have it entered in my inventory and accounting systems.  And when we purchase parts and materials, it is difficult to make sure it is all being billed out to the customers.”

Tracer solves these problems. 

1. We go beyond just showing you where your technicians are. Tracer uses smart location aware systems to automatically determine when a job starts and ends.  If Tracer’s start and end times vary from your technician, Tracer will alert you.  Tracer uses the same systems to track office time and travel time.
2. If your technician is projected to arrive late at an appointment, Tracer will send a message to your dispatcher so you can either solver the problem or inform the customer ahead of time.  Your customers perceive an advance warning of a late appointment as superior customer service.  They don’t get that level of service from their other vendors. (You don’t from your vendors, your customers don’t either).
3. Your technicians use their smart phones to complete the details of their work including parts and materials used.  This information is transmitted directly to your office allowing you to invoice and close the work order quickly and get paid sooner.

With all its inefficiencies, we have to thank the government for creating the location based solutions industry.  GPS capability was pioneered for military operations and made mainstream in part by the FCC’s 1996 Enhanced 911 Initiative requiring that cell phone carriers provide emergency responders with the location of mobile users making 911 calls.  Today, compliance with this requirements has created a growing location based solutions industry where pocket pc and hand held smart phones running the Windows Mobile Software can provide a wealth of location aware information.

GPS (Global Positioning Satallite) is the most accurate method for location based vehicle tracking.  But it is not the only one. In fact, under certain conditions, it is not the best choice:  In areas with tall buildings or in-doors, GPS does not work well because it relies on a line of site with satallites orbiting the earth.  In such environments, an alternative location based solution for tracking cell phones, and therefore the vehicle that the phone’s operator is driving is possible with network based triangulation.  In this model, 3 or more cell towers measure the signal strength of the cell phone and estimate its distance from the tower.  Triangulating this result from 3 towers gives a fix on the cell phone’s location.

Location Based Solutions are cropping up everywhere.  Papa Johns Pizza now allows customers in Alabama to track their pizza delivery via TrackMyPizza.com using the driver’s GPS-enabled cell phone.  These types of solutions are faciliated by the sharp increase in cell phones that are sold with GPS capability.   InStat estimated that 153 million such GPS phones with location based solutions capability shipped last year and that number will increase to almost 600 million by 2011 (information week).

While Location Based Solutions using GPS enabled smart phones are technology centric, Louis Vuitton enters this space with a “a series of value-added content products using low-tech location. Creativity at its top!”

The Louis Vuitton Soundwalk, a unique location-based urban soundtrack, produced in collaboration with Soundwalk is a cutting-edge audio guide, available in six languages, offerring a vibrant portrayal of three Chinese cities – Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai – following the footsteps of the three greatest icons of Chinese Cinema: Gong Li for Beijing, Shu Qi for Hong Kong and Joan Chen for Shanghai.

Ideally for people travelling to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, each hour-long soundwalk features a story whose narration perfectly synchronizes with the itinerary - the voice of the narrator geographically guides the physical visitor in real time through an area of a city or a district - accompanied by the signature sounds of the city. 

Full Article here: http://www.m-trends.org/2008/06/louis-vuitton-soundwalk.html

So gear up your Windows Mobile Hand held GPS Phone with the TracerProPak software, track your fleet with cell phone tracking capability and load up the Vuitton sound track for your listening pleasure and combine work with fun on the road.