Location Tracking in Logistics: The Growing Significance of an MDM Solution

In recent times, the logistics industry has witnessed several technological shifts. Apart from shippers and carriers exploring and investing in innovations and performance overhaul, the industry is focused on enhancing customer experiences through improved last mile delivery packaging and processes. Today’s logistics companies are not only mitigating business challenges but are also finding new approaches to stay competitive and profitable. In the meantime, location tracking in logistics is picking up pace.

One crucial aspect that facilitates them to stay on top of their game is an excellent and transparent fleet management and delivery/distribution process. Keeping a sharp eye on the delivery complexities and resolving the obstacles related to management of fleet availability, utilization of resources and delivery delays. This is where location tracking systems in logistics can play a significant role.

Also Read: Learn all about vehicle mounted devices and ways to manage them

What is Location Tracking and How it Benefits Logistics Workforce Management?

Companies belonging to the logistics industry use GPS technology in more than one way. Helping fleet drivers and last mile delivery guys navigate from one location to another is just one aspect of GPS tracking technology in logistics. As a precursor to geofencing, location tracking helps a logistics company to trace the live location of a GPS enabled fleet, vehicle or enterprise endpoint used by the last-mile delivery guy or the vehicle driver. In certain occasions, and based on applied settings, location-tracking along with geo-fencing can send alerts and notifications to the company IT admin when a specific vehicle/driver leaves or enters an area or location.

Geolocation tracking systems in logistics help companies owning a fleet of vehicles, ELD devices and various other types of endpoints used by the drivers and other frontline executives, keep a constant check on the whereabouts of these enterprise machineries, delivery items and IT assets. Moreover, these endpoints carry corporate data worth millions. Hence, location-tracking system provides real-time information that helps track and monitor the fleet’s location, vehicle speed, kilometres travelled, routes taken, engine startup and shutdown, idle time spent and other data.

Read More: Why and how to track location of your frontline workers

Location Tracking Facilitates Mobilization of Logistics in Multiple Ways

For a logistics company, it becomes imperative to maintain the full repository of information about the real-time location and usage scenarios of endpoints and vehicles used by their drivers and frontline executives. When location tracking is provided as a feature by an MDM solution for logistics provider, it can facilitate the company’s IT security to a great extent. It allows the company to stay on top of their endpoint security and help them track their devices as well as employees in real-time. Location tracking comes with the following advantages for a logistics company.

• Improves fleet management
• Optimize driver and resource availability
• Maintain driver performance and safety
• Control cost assessments
• Enhance customer service
• Matchless operational efficiency
• Mitigate risks of data, device and asset theft

Logistics Mobility Management Done Right with a Perfect MDM Solution

Scalefusion MDM comes with a powerful location tracking and geofencing functionality that the logistics companies can put to use to track their device and vehicle in real-time along with details like date, latitude, longitude and time. On top of that, the company IT admin can set up geo-fence and necessary alerts to extract timely reports whenever a device/vehicle enters or exits the specified boundaries. This maintains consistency of information around device usage and security.

Location tracking in logistics provided by Scalefusion MDM can prove to be beneficial in multiple ways.

• It helps in finding the exact location of the lost, unattended or stolen devices
• The actual position of the endpoints can be monitored using location tracking to understand if they are used for work purposes only
• Location tracking can be used to assess and detect any suspicious activities by employees by observing their device usage and exit/entry pattern
• IT admin can further tighten their security by disabling certain device apps like camera and Siri in specific sensitive locations using location-tracking as a feature.
•  Location tracking also helps the logistics company keep a constant track to make sure that the vehicles do not tread an unwanted or restricted area by enabling warning signals.

Read Also: Why companies should pay attention to geofencing and location-tracking

Logistics, supply chain and transportation companies owning a huge number of fleets can make a great use of Scalefusion’s location tracking feature that can track the routes taken by vehicles and their drivers and can speed up the process of vehicle/endpoint utilization by examining better transport routes. In certain cases, it also performs behaviour analysis. It also helps the companies understand how many times a vehicle attended to a location, the expected time of arrival, or if vehicles broke from the scheduled route to help you make better fleet scheduling decisions.

Imagine a scenario when a fleet of vehicles carrying imported goods gets stuck in the middle of nowhere due to a natural calamity or an accident. In this case, the Scalefusion managed endpoints with the activated location-tracking feature can be easily traceable by the company. It helps them send rescue operations on time to ensure the safety and security of the people as well as the endpoints. Apart from location tracking and geofencing, Scalefusion MDM for logistics comes with a bunch of powerful features like remote device troubleshooting, device analytics, secure team communication, mobile application management, remote data wipe, remote security policy enforcement, mobile content management, automation of IT tasks and many more.

Together they are used to facilitate and streamline device management for logistics companies through driver and vehicle management, real-time information sharing, minimum device downtime, mitigated risks of device and data theft, device access control, driver/admin communication, and a fully centralized and seamless device monitoring.