I attended a technology conference about GPS fleet tracking systems in Antalya last month. Before this conference, I believed that the industry which benefits most out of these systems was Logistics. On contrary to my belief, when I saw the statistics, I realized that this was not the case. The numbers showed that sales and marketing industries were the ones who benefited the most out of this systems. Probably, you are thinking that a logistics company should definitely invest into tracking systems because it often has a large fleet to control and these systems can help reducing operational costs. However, if you pay attention more carefully, you will realize that the return of investment could be significantly larger for the companies that are more sales oriented. Why is that? Here are some good reasons:

Let's say you have 15 sales people in your organization and each personnel drives a company car. Day to day these guys go out to the field to contact with potential customers. Your firm's revenue depends on their success, whereas a logistics company's probably not. As an owner, you would like to know that these guys visit each customer and measure their efficiency. If you don't invest into GPS tracking systems, it would be harder for you to learn what's going on in the field. Why? Simple answer: people lie. A sales guy might have visited the customer but do you have any idea how much time he/she spent? It's very possible that your sales people visit all potential targets but spend only a few minutes in each. People in sales usually put quotas to overcome this problem, but this is still not a perfect solution.

In addition to this, try to consider the psychological side of my argument here. For instance, I've visited a customer couple days ago, and she asked me to show her how to use our GPS software. I was really shocked to hear this because we gave her training months ago. When I asked her how come she did not even once touched the graphical user interface, she told me that she did not really need it to. She said: "All my sales people know that they are being tracked, so they are definitely aware why they should act more properly". And apparently they actually did! When I checked the monthly reports, I learned that none of the sales personnel once driven their cars in the weekend, and they paid perfect attention to speed limits during weekdays. I was really impressed!

Once you employ these systems in your company, sales people often realize that they should maximize their efficiency everyday. They become significantly dedicated to their jobs instead of wasting time on useless things. They know the fact that as a manager you can always pull up a report in front of them and question their actions. Every one of them tend to minimize vehicle usage for personal reasons. In addition to that, a clearer routing will promote the idea of increased sales by making it to more appointments throughout the course of a work day, increasing their volume and your bottom line.

Clearly, there are great operational benefits of using GPS tracking software in your company such as minimizing engine idle time, monitoring speeds, optimizing routes and reducing fuel costs. Your organization will significantly save 10%-15% on operational costs but the sales revenues will also grows as a result of this investment. A GPS tracking software might be what you are looking for your organization.