If you manage a fleet at an enterprise-level business that includes a diverse mix of vehicles supporting a wide set of company needs, it might be challenging to have visibility into all the moving parts of your fleet operations. While leveraging a GPS vehicle tracking system can be helpful, there’s a few important things to consider to make sure the solution you select is specific to your business and fleet management needs. For enterprise size fleets, this could mean finding a system that’s easy to use across varying roles in the organization or a solution that integrates smoothly with software you’re already investing in. 

To help you find a useful solution for your large or growing fleet, here are three important things to look for when evaluating a GPS tracking system. 

1. Smooth onboarding

Adding a new technology to your business can be an intimidating process, regardless of your company’s size. But it can require an especially significant lift if you’re adding a new technology that needs to be used by thousands of trucks and understood by thousands of employees. To keep the process as simple and cost-effective as possible, it’s important to consider a vehicle tracking solution with seamless onboarding.    

Robust vehicle tracking systems like Samsara offer simple deployments that minimize friction between set-up and go-time so your fleet doesn’t waste any time getting back on the road. Additionally, if you have GPS tracking devices installed across thousands of vehicles, an update can set your entire fleet behind schedule—especially if new GPS trackers need to be re-installed on each truck. This can be particularly disruptive if your business needs to hire a third party to complete the installs. If you manage a fleet, this means managing an additional schedule on top of your drivers while also ensuring internal stakeholders are looped-in.

To make updates as quick and painless as possible, consider a vehicle tracking provider that enables updates and new features  to take place via firmware. In the same way that your smartphone can install a new update automatically from the comfort of your office or home, consider a vehicle tracking provider that can offer the same convenience for your fleet. With Samsara, a majority of updates are firmware-based so you can not only free up more time for other tasks but also rest assured knowing your vehicles always have the most up to date technology. 

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2. Intuitive data filtering 

Many of our enterprise customers are comprised of several hundred managers, employees, and drivers. With so many different people in a diverse set of roles, there can be an influx of information and data that quickly slows down the pace of business.

In order to bypass slow-downs and ensure the right people are getting the right information, a powerful vehicle tracking system should offer role-based permissions—or privacy settings—that allow designated people to access specific information. This can be incredibly useful for larger fleets, especially when they’re inundated with a great deal of information and are pressed to make sure the right person is getting the right information at the right time.

For example, if a fleet manager based out of the Midwest is alerted that one of their drivers has just experienced a harsh incident, sifting through maintenance schedules from trucks across the United States is probably not a good use of their time when the priority is to understand the event that occurred. But with role-based permissions, they’re able to quickly and easily identify the footage needed without getting lost in an endless amount of data.  

With Samsara’s custom administrator roles and role-based permissions, your fleet can easily create new levels of administrative access for any person at your company. In addition to granular permissions, administrators can also pair custom roles with a defined Samsara tag to further help organize data by things like region, equipment type, customers served, or business unit. If a custom role allows  maintenance access for specific information in a particular location, for example, tags can be used to further segment that information by a route or vehicle type. 

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3. Simple integrations

If you have a large fleet, you probably have a number of existing internal systems that you’ve invested in—everything from ERP to maintenance and dispatching systems—that are integral to your business. This means that if you do introduce a new system to your operations, you probably don’t want to do so at the expense of important existing data and insights. 

With certain vehicle tracking systems, like Samsara, enterprise fleets can easily connect their most important third-party desktop or mobile apps and capture the benefit of real-time data for all their operations. Samsara's open architecture enables integration opportunities with a variety of partners in transportation and industrial segments, including payroll applications, fuel consumption cards, inventory management, and more. 

Before Samsara, telecommunication utility company Uniti FIber had to synthesize data from multiple platforms in order to resolve an issue for any number of customers the company serves across the 20+ states they operate in. But after switching to Samsara, Uniti Fiber is able to sync data with existing systems—like Salesforce and Esri—to enable their fleet visibility across their entire software ecosystem.

How to evaluate a vehicle tracking system

Is your business looking for a vehicle tracking solution that can provide real-time location data for its trucks, trailers, and vehicles while also supporting the growing needs of a large company? 

Samsara brings the experience of Google and Apple engineering to GPS fleet tracking with a telematics solution that provides fleet managers more visibility into their operations. Samsara also offers a solution that provides larger organizations with the resources to move quickly, sift through data effectively, and integrate seamlessly with existing investments. 

To learn more about Samsara’s real-time GPS trackers and fleet management software, reach out for a free trial or free demo today.

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