In the highly-competitive limousine market, fleet operations cannot tolerate unreliability or inaccuracy. Vehicle Tracking Solutions recognized this early on and has been providing progressive fleet management software to its customers for more than 13 years.
Cunningham started Vehicle Tracking Solutions in 2002 with his wife after years of working in the telecommunications industry.
“We both loved wireless technology, and saw this emerging market for using GPS to monitor assets,” he says. The couple began to build the infrastructure for the company and reached out to different transportation segments that might be interested. They found quick supporters in the limousine industry.
In the limousine industry, operators tend to use the software to improve upon best practices when serving their clients.
“People connect vehicle tracking with stopping an employee from doing something wrong,” CEO and founder John Cunningham says. “But in chauffeured transportation, it’s very different. I learned early on that these operators do great training and trust their employees.”
FASTFACTS: Vehicle Tracking Solutions
Location: Commack, N.Y.
Service: fleet management software
Owner: John M. Cunningham Jr.
Founded: 2002
Employees: 53
Website: VehicleTracking.com
Contact: (631) 586-7400
Providing A Modern, Mobile Experience
Vehicle Tracking Solutions, which counts Empire CLS and Dav El/BostonCoach among its clients, has developed Silent Passenger, a user-friendly robust fleet management program, powered by Google Mapping. Once onboard with the program, operators gain access to a dashboard where they see a GPS map of all vehicles integrated with real-time traffic and information on vehicle movements. Silent Passenger features proprietary split-screen mapping which allows a dispatcher to view multiple sedans at the same time, allowing for more efficient dispatching.
“Dispatchers can look at the screen and see if there’s a traffic jam,” Cunningham says. “If a car might not make a ride or be late, they can immediately inform their client or call an affiliate. What we do is help make sure operators can raise the level of service they’re providing to their client.”
An ETA feature within Silent Passenger allows operators to view the four closest vehicles to a pick-up location, as well as provide an estimated time of arrival (including real-time traffic information) to a client. FlyteTyme, a VTS client, has gone one step further by developing an app which allows clients to view their cars’ real-time locations by using the GPS data from Silent Passenger. This data enables operators to provide their clients with a mobile, modern experience — something no longer considered a luxury in this industry.
Silent Passenger allows operators to monitor driver behavior and ensure client safety. An operator can see if a vehicle, for example, is braking too hard, taking corners too closely, or accelerating too fast.
Vehicle Tracking Solutions also has helped operators manage large corporate accounts. “We can prove how long the client was at the wait stop, or how long they were at the play, or that 10-minute stop on the way home from the airport. So many times the client thinks it was just a short time, when actually it was two hours or more, so we help clear that up.”
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New Releases
By listening to clients and examining the real-life challenges experienced by operators, VTS can improve the suite of features offered. Cunningham has two new features he’s promoting:
Integration with major fuel card companies: By partnering with fuel card providers that operators use, Vehicle Tracking Solutions correlates the amount of fuel put into each vehicle with the miles driven to get accurate fuel cost assessments, while using GPS to monitor route choices and reduce idle times.
Silent Passenger Connect ties back-office reservation management systems to the GPS in the vehicle, and uses an open API for such tasks as sending an SMS text from the chauffeur to the client once the vehicle arrives within a designated radius. “You can also text clients’ current vehicle map locations and they can watch it arrive,” Cunningham says.
In Silent Passenger, operators can input dates for vehicle specifics such as registration renewals, insurance expirations, and safety inspection deadlines. They also can set any maintenance indicators such as oil changes, tire changes, tune-ups, etc., and have them set by mileage indicators.
“It’s amazing how frequently information is transmitted now,” says Cunningham of the competitive tech times. “It used to be that four-minute intervals were sufficient, but now operators get live updates as often as every five seconds using our data feed.”
Keywords
fleet management Fleet Vehicles GPS GPS Fleet Tracking GPS Navigation industry vendors
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