Gardening and landscaping company Town & Country Gardens saved almost £20,000 in staff hours in the first year after installing Fleetmatics GPS tracking.

It introduced the technology two years ago to its fleet of six vans to get clarity on staff hours and combat unnecessary spending on unwarranted overtime.

Currently, the company has 14 core staff, but the number of employees nearly doubles when extra help is hired during the summer. This used to boost the overspending on staff hours even further, until director Ben Skinner decided to put an end to it. After researching different providers on a vehicle tracking comparison website, he decided to sign up to Fleetmatics Reveal.

He said: “Before getting Fleetmatics, the biggest problem for us was overspending on staffing hours.

“We used to rely on our staff to report their own hours at the end of the day when they returned on site, but this meant that we ended up paying for a lot of hours that were just not justified.

“After installing Fleetmatics GPS tracking, the change was almost immediate; in the first year we saved almost £20,000 in staff hours.

“These savings alone made the introduction of the tracking system worthwhile.”

Since installing Reveal, the company has seen improvements in other areas of business as well. For Town & Country Gardens, as for many London-based fleets, traffic is a daily problem. With the roads of the Capital often at a standstill, reaching customers in time is an ongoing challenge. However, Reveal’s Live Map feature has provided the company with new ways to beat the traffic.

“Thanks to the live feed, we can now see if our staff are taking inefficient routes on their way to the next customer. This enables us to redirect them to a better route and avoid unnecessary delays,” Skinner said.

Overall, he believes that fleet tracking has helped the company improve its customer service and the increased accountability brought by the many features of Reveal has had a positive effect on the company image.

Thanks to the live feed, he can now see the location of all vehicles – and staff – in real time which allows him to respond to customer queries more accurately and inform customers in advance of any delays occurring due to traffic conditions or staff being held up at the previous job.

The tracking system has also proven helpful on the rare occasion when billing issues have arisen with customers. With customers often not at home when the gardeners are at work, the ability to prove that staff were on site for the hours the customer has been billed for gives the company credibility.

“We don’t have a high complaint rate anyway, but having the tracking system in place heads off problems. Thanks to Fleetmatics, we are now able to prove by the minute exactly how long our staff were on site, when they arrived and what time they left,” said Skinner.

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