As a fleet operations manager, you’re likely looking for ways to make your asset tracking solutions work more efficiently for you and your organization. The good news is that if you’re using an equipment tracking solution, such as global positioning system (GPS) tracking software and GPS tracking devices, you’re already on your way to improving your efficiency!
However, there’s more to it than just having a solution in place—you not only need to have the right equipment in place, you also need to know how to use it most effectively. Check out our tips for improving your asset tracking solutions!
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What Is Asset Management?
Asset management entails keeping track of your company’s assets from a variety of perspectives including physical location, equipment maintenance needs, optimized use, and more! Asset management is a complex job that ideally requires an organized mind, knowledge of how to leverage your company’s assets to achieve strategic goals, and the ability to utilize GPS tracking solutions to make the most use of your time.
Therefore, asset tracking and equipment tracking software is a means to gain greater control of your high-value assets in the field and to closely monitor their activities from the comfort of your office or home. With the click of a mouse or a couple of taps in your mobile app, you can track and monitor a variety of functions, including:
- Who last used your equipment and where
- How it was used
- Whether it is active or offline
- Operator or driver behaviors
- Your assets’ lifecycle management
- Ensuring that it is appropriately being maintained or repaired
- And more!
While all of these insights are sure to be incredibly valuable to you and your operations, you might not be sure how to get started making your asset tracking efforts most effective.
4 Tips for Improving Your Asset Tracking Solutions in 2022
Asset tracking is of the utmost importance when dealing with your company’s property, ranging from medical devices to construction equipment and beyond. We’ve put together some tips to help you make your asset and fleet tracking solutions reduce your workload instead of adding to it.
Select or Upgrade Your Tracking Systems and Equipment
One of the foundational steps to effective asset tracking is to make sure that your asset tracking system is updated and suits your operational needs. An issue that many fleet or asset managers run into when using their existing equipment tracking solutions—or upgrading to new ones—is that they try to use components from different systems that don’t necessarily integrate or communicate with one another.
For example, some companies use proprietary tracking devices for equipment that isn’t compatible with third-party software or other products. This means that you can’t mix and match or change to a new vendor’s software without first upgrading the rest of your system. This issue not only leads to operational inefficiencies and additional expenses, but it also can lead to errors, miscommunications, or missing information.
Familiarize Yourself and Your Team with the Asset Management Platform
While having a system in place is important, it is just as important that you and your team understand how to use it effectively. Set aside time to familiarize yourself with the software, including its settings, filters, attributes, and understand how to generate reports so you can review important information.
If there is something you or your colleagues don’t understand or want to learn about, it is important that you have a service provider that has a technical support team that is able (and wanting) to meet your needs. Their team should be able to provide you with useful tips and advice — or point you to a place where you can find those things — to help you get the most out of your system.
Determine Your Equipment's Needs
GPS asset tracking devices come in many different formats, such as battery-powered or solar-powered units, and in many shapes and sizes, such as our portable RastracGo global location tracking device. They feature different capabilities that can meet a variety of needs, which sometimes makes it challenging to choose the devices that will best meet your needs.
How you may want to set your asset tracking devices to synchronize their data with your asset management system may be different when using battery-powered as compared to solar-powered devices since it can play a significant impact on the tracker’s usefulness. More frequent updates provide more up-to-date and useful data; however, it also drains batteries more quickly. Testing and changing your update rate for your GPS devices may be tricky, but it is worth it to get the best of your data update frequency and conserve your battery life.
If you’re not sure which equipment is best for your operational needs, Rastrac’s team of specialists can help you choose the best devices to improve your operational efficiency!
Customize Your Reports
Borrowing from William Shakespeare’s oft-quoted phrase, when it comes to data collection, there can be “too much of a good thing.” In this case, some asset tracking software will overwhelm you with the sheer amount of data it provides. However, with no way to filter out useful from non-useful data, it can cause you to spend unnecessary time combing through numbers you don’t need and manually sorting out the insights that are actually relevant to your operational needs.
The purpose of asset tracking reports is to gain insight into patterns of performance within your operations so you and your team can better track patterns over time, understand the current status of your assets, and set goals for future metrics. By using the customizable filters of Rastrac’s user-friendly GPS tracking software, you can choose what data you wish to collect and receive reports for on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis
Make Your Asset Tracking Solutions Simple & Effective with Rastrac!
GPS tracking systems aren’t exclusive to fleet operations; leveraging this important and comprehensive technology can be incredibly beneficial to your asset tracking efforts, too! From heavy construction equipment to portable generators, refrigerated trailers to emergency medical equipment and supplies, asset tracking systems can be a crucial resource for optimizing asset utilization and protecting a business’ equipment investments.
At Rastrac, we offer a wide variety of services and tools to meet the needs of our customers in numerous industries. Whether you need to track trailers in the oil and gas industry, heavy equipment rentals, medical devices, or the current location of maintenance/service vehicles, there’s a specialized Rastrac solution that can help.
Contact us today to speak with a Rastrac expert and improve your asset tracking solutions now!
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