The power of geofencing

Fleet managers can benefit enormously from using the geofencing feature in the Rental Tracker portal. Geofencing can significantly improve a company’s efficiency, security and productivity. However, we have noticed that the potential of geofencing is often underestimated and, as a result, underutilised. That is why, in this blog, we outline the benefits of geofencing.

Geofencing is a GPS technology that involves defining a virtual geographical boundary. The geofence function can be configured to send notifications or alerts and generate reports when a vehicle enters or leaves a specific area.

Geofencing offers a range of benefits, which we have summarised for you below:

Prevention of theft and misuse:
Companies can use geofencing to quickly detect irregularities and breaches of contract. To do this, they can, for example, set up an alert when a vehicle leaves or enters a country, region, area (such as a large port) or a specific address.
In the event of misuse, non-payment or theft, companies may decide to activate an immobiliser or contact the police. This enables them to protect themselves against further losses, additional costs or other breaches of contract.

“A growing problem is the tampering with vehicle odometers and the replacement of parts with older, inferior ones at specific locations. Recently, this type of vehicle misuse came to light because vehicles were regularly visiting the same obscure location. This was detected by creating a geofence around the suspected location, which ultimately prevented a significant financial loss.”

However, geofencing can be used not only outside the company, but also within it to monitor equipment and ensure that it is only used by staff in authorised areas and during working hours. By actively monitoring this, further unauthorised use of equipment can be prevented.
Support with access control and compliance with legislation and regulations:
Geofencing can be used to trigger alerts when vehicles enter or leave sensitive or restricted areas. For example, geofencing can generate security alerts when objects (and therefore people) enter or leave unauthorised building sites or company premises.
We are also seeing an increasing number of zero-emission zones in city centres where polluting vans and lorries are not permitted to drive (at certain times). Alerts can be set up for this purpose, which are sent to the fleet manager and/or the driver when an unauthorised vehicle enters the city centre. In this way, geofencing helps to prevent unauthorised access to specific locations and potential fines.
Equipment and staff management and time recording:
Planners can monitor the location of equipment to ensure that it arrives at the right place on time and remains there. This is particularly useful for companies with mobile or field teams, or those in the transport sector. Reports make it easy to generate an overview of what was present where and when during a specific period.
Improved customer service:
Planners can receive notifications when a vehicle enters or leaves a geofence zone. Depending on the sector, this can be useful for tracking delivery times and informing customers of delivery arrival times.

Would you like to see a step-by-step guide on how to set up geofencing correctly? If so, please watch our instructional videos on our website: https://dev.rentaltracker.nl/instructie-videos/