Many people have heard the term “Landmarks”, but aren’t exactly sure what they are and their value.
In simple terms, a Landmark is a boundary around an office location, company yard, job site, distribution center, customer location, or any location your employees may visit. Also, if your employees take the company vehicles home, you may want to set a landmark around their house.
A Landmark captures the time when your vehicle arrives and leaves a location, how long it was stopped, how long it traveled within the landmark, and how long it idled within the landmark.
So why is this information important? Well, there are several reasons. Many customers pay their employees or bill customers based on how long they were at a job site or customer location. By creating Landmarks, you will know exactly when your employee arrives and leaves a location, and how long they were there. Have you ever received a call from a customer claiming your employee arrived 20 minutes late or left early? Now, you can know when your employee arrived and left.
Additionally, Landmarks can aid in the recovery of stolen vehicles or heavy equipment. Again, you create a Landmark around our company office or job site. If a vehicle leaves the Landmark in the middle of the night you can receive an immediate notification that a vehicle or asset has left that location.
As business owners, we like to trust our employees. We can’t see all of our field employees without the help of GPS fleet tracking. Throughout the day an employee could take advantage of this freedom. Many companies, especially where the employee brings the company vehicle home, have set a Landmark at the employee’s house. This is important for several reasons. First, you can know if the employee is going home during the day and not working. Second, you can tell if the employee is using the company vehicle for personal business. Third, you can tell if the employee is doing side-jobs using the company’s assets and materials.
Companies can also set Landmarks around locations where your employees should not go. For example, bars or competitor locations. Through the use of Landmarks, one customer determined that an employee was selling company materials to a competitor. Additionally, you want to limit your risks and liabilities by knowing if an employee stopped at a local bar to have a few drinks between jobs or at the end of the day prior to driving the company vehicle.
In summary, Landmarks can help reduce your payroll/overtime costs, allow you to provide accurate billing to customers, aid in the recovery of stolen equipment, and help in reducing your risks by knowing where your employees are visiting.