Have you ever thought about ways to improve the efficiency of you small business' fleet? If you have then you should really give GPS fleet tracking a consideration. According to a March 2008 study made by the Aberdeen group small fleets were able to quickly and successfuly employ fleet management solutions that involved GPS technology.

In the report the researches divided fleet sizes into categories based on the size ranges of the fleets. Small fleets had 1 to 10 vehicles, a medium small fleet had 11 to 50, a medium fleet had anywhere from 51 to 250, a medium large had 251 to 1000, and a large fleet was considered on that had in excess of 1000 vehicles.

In addition to the different fleet size the report also tried to measure the different reasons that companies desired to employ GPS fleet tracking. The top reason mentioned by small fleets was a desire to create positive customer interactions. This response was listed by a commanding majority of the studies respondents (73%).

The different business see customer satisfaction as a key factor for their business. They wanted to generate repeat customers as well as create word-of-mouth marketing through the experience that they give their customers, whether it be an ahead of schedule delivery or an on-time service representative.

But this was by no means the only reason business wanted to find a fleet managmenet solution. These other reasons include a desire to improve response times for service or delivery calls (57%), mitigate the rising costs of fuel and other fleet maintenance related expenses (46%), increase overall productivty of workers (41%), and to improve the longevity of vehicles by reducing overall wear-and-tear on the fleet (16%).

The Aberdeen report had many interesting findings, but the one particularly interesting to small fleets (1-10 vehicles) was that fleets of this size have a better success rate with implementing GPS technology and seeing rapid benefits than large fleets (1000+ vehicles). The report states that small fleets were able to realize and increase of 25% in the amount of work orders that can be completed. The math is simple - more work orders = more revenue generated by your fleet. Who doesn't want their fleet to make more money?

Most fleets saw these types of results two years after implementation. To give a point of reference, large fleets only saw an increase in efficiency of 8%.

Small fleets also saw a significant increase in the abilities of technicians to arrive to their destinations on time. They saw this increase by 46% over a two year period. You can imagine how this might have impacted the satisfaction of the customers serviced.

When it boils down to it though, only you can really decide what will be best for you company's fleet. However, it is very likely that some form of GPS technology, whether it be simple navigation devices or the more complex fleet tracking systems, will benefit your company in a significant way. The benefits of more revenue, increased customer satifaction, and better fleet maintance could translat into a better bottom line for you business.