GPS devices are a great way to help cut down on costs. One of the first thing companies consider is whether or not they can do this for free. Google Latitude offers free tracking and can be tempting to many companies. However, there can be a number of drawbacks that put this into perspective.
When using Google Latitude, each phone must be compatible with the Google Latitude application. Most recent smart phones are capable of this but of you have older phones you are out of luck. You will have to get a new contract and buy smart phones for all of your drivers and will probably want to buy insurance since replacing a phone can cost up to $500. Smart phone plans start at around $30 a month while GPS tracking is around $20 a month, and GPS plans don’t tie you into contracts.
Another problem with getting your employees these new phones is that along with GPS capabilities, they can get on YouTube, surf the internet, get on facebook, etc. With these distractions you can be sure that not all of your employees will be putting as much effort into doing their job as they normally would be.
Google Latitude was created mostly so that friends could keep track of each other and if they happened to be in the same area their phones would alert them. While this seems cool, it was created for friends to keep track of each other, not for businesses to track employees. The information is updated every minute at most and while Google Latitude can provide a history but it is often vague. It can tell you the general location of where your driver was but not how long they were there or how they got there.
Another problem businesses have encountered with Google Latitude is that to be able to track employees the employees have to turn on the application, and if they don’t want to be tracked then it just takes a press of a button to turn off the tracker.
While going with free tracking options can seem like a good idea at first they often lead to more employee problems and wasted money that would not have been an issue with a normal GPS device.
Top Tags at High Quality Ad Network
