Trusting the location of your assets starts with investing in the right tracking system for your business. Specifically, a quality system that you can trust to keep you constantly updated. Whether you’re in charge of managing a handful of assets or if your numbers are in the triple digits, it’s vital that you are able to mitigate risk across multiple fronts in order to keep your company operations moving smoothly. Keep reading to learn how GPS tracking systems can be a powerful tool to leverage in the field of asset risk management!
Quick Links:
- What Is Asset Risk Management?
- Why Is Asset Risk Management Important for Your Business?
- Top Challenges for Asset Risk Managers
- 5 Reasons to use GPS Tracking for Asset Risk Management
What Is Asset Risk Management?
Asset risk management entails mitigating risk that might impact your assets and business; this could be a financial risk, operational risk, legal risk, etc. An asset risk manager is responsible for analyzing an asset’s status and proposed situation from various perspectives in order to develop policies that keep everyone’s safety a priority while maximizing the production of the asset; it’s a complicated job that requires a dynamic approach to assets and their intersection with company objectives. Of course, risk managers aren’t able to completely avoid or prevent risk from being a factor to consider, but their task is to find the best way forward in relation to potential risks.
Why Is Asset Risk Management Important for Your Business?
Asset risk management is crucial for your business because it secures your company’s operations, reputation, and overall future in terms of ensuring safety and longevity. Asset risk managers help implement policies and training that result in the safe operation of assets while also monitoring the current use and status of assets to confirm that they’re running smoothly. Without taking these practical and logistical perspectives into consideration, your business could be liable for workplace injuries, operational downtime, loss of business due to reputational damage, etc.
Top Challenges for Asset Risk Managers
In the field of asset risk management, there are common challenges that risk managers face and must mitigate along the way, including:
Unknown Asset Location
Obviously, the worst-case scenario for an asset risk manager is simply not knowing where an asset is located either from a case of theft or a situation in which an employee took some liberties with the asset. Regardless, when an asset manager is unable to put eyes—literal or technological—on their assets, it’s a problem that can result in delays on projects, extended downtime on operations, and cost your company time and money.
Tracking Down Stolen Assets
According to the 2019 Crime in the United States report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), there were more than 721,000 motor vehicle thefts estimated to have taken place nationwide at a cost of $6.4 billion. In the event that one or more of your company’s assets are indeed stolen, there’s almost no way to track them down and recover them without some kind of technological assistance. Theft can be incredibly detrimental to company operations since this results in hefty financial costs, lost time, and delayed work, and customers are liable to lose trust in your business.
Unexpected Breakdowns
Manually tracking maintenance needs for individual assets might seem fine and doable if you’re only worrying about one or two assets, but even then you’re missing out on deeper insight regarding the quality of your assets. And if you’re responsible for dozens of assets, then tracking maintenance schedules with spreadsheets will quickly become overwhelming and result in important notifications slipping through the cracks. If your assets aren’t operable or aren’t functioning properly, then your company is at risk for safety violations or worse.
5 Reasons to use GPS Tracking for Asset Risk Management
GPS tracking is a tremendous resource to leverage in the world of asset risk management and can:
Bolster Trust In Your Employees
In every team, you’ll likely have some employees you can trust wholeheartedly and one or more rogue individuals who take advantage of company time and resources. Even when you are running a profitable outfit, investing in GPS tracking can help improve efficiency, service delivery, and productivity.
For example, you can keep track of the stops drivers make, the amount of time they spend at each stop, and the servicing points they visit. This data allows you to assess risks along the way, and plan to secure your assets early. Abuse of trust by your employees can expose your assets to great risk and put you in compromising situations.
Keep Assets Safe from Theft
GPS tracking systems can provide theft prevention benefits beyond just tracking the current location of the vehicle. For example, the remote starter disable feature that some GPS devices have allows you to keep vehicles from being started outside of normal business hours. This is incredibly useful for preventing the theft of vehicles or other types of powered assets. As a risk manager, you can prevent drivers from taking your assets into dangerous zones or outside of your area of operations by using geofencing to trigger an alert the moment the asset crosses a specific boundary.
If Needed, Immediately Recover Assets In the Case of Theft
While most thieves would be deterred from stealing assets that advertise the use of GPS tracking, that’s not always the case. In the event that your assets are stolen, you can use your GPS tracking system to immediately locate and recover your company’s property. Utilizing an asset tracking solution also provides a handy paper trail to turn over to authorities when filing a police report or otherwise locating the assets that fall under your responsibility. This significantly reduces any downtime that your operations might encounter in the case of theft without the use of GPS tracking devices, which keeps your business running smoothly.
Enforce Contracts
With GPS tracking to manage your assets, you can ensure that your assets are kept in their appropriate use area. This is especially helpful when dealing with expensive assets because high-value assets can result in reasonable trust issues. For example, if you have a truck headed east with pricey cargo, then you need to make sure it sticks to its route and does not go outside of the set route. GPS tracking and geofencing capabilities grant peace of mind for this journey since you can be alerted to any detours and contact the driver to check in with them regarding the status of their travels.
Get Notified About Maintenance Needs
Another important aspect of your role as an asset risk manager is ensuring you service your assets on time. Through GPS tracking, you can program reminders for your vehicles and other assets to undergo maintenance. This ensures compliance with state inspection and maintenance requirements and prevents costly breakdowns that strand drivers or leave customers furious. Plus, you have access to analytics and performance data that you can use to assess when something is wrong. In such cases, you can alert the customer immediately and give them updates on the latest developments.
Partner with Rastrac for a Better Asset Risk Management Solution!
In risk management, GPS tracking gives you data that you can use to improve the measure you take to mitigate risks. Once you have some resources and systems that you can trust to tell you where your assets are at all times, you can now focus your energy and resources on improving policies for asset protection. You also have the opportunity to take a different approach to risk management and come up with innovative ways to secure your company’s assets.
After investing in a GPS tracking solution, you have access to data that you can trust to give you the exact location of your truck and assets. A system such as Rastrac offers custom solutions for your business, giving you the peace of mind you need to keep your assets safe. Contact us today!
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