Automotive Fleet Magazine recently released the 2013 Fleet Guide that highlights the top 20 questions to ask telematics companies when looking to select a provider. These are great questions to put on your RFP. We will provide a little insight on each of the questions to ask over the next few blog posts.
Do you have an in-house development team?
This could be important to you if you are having the provider work on integrations or in the case that you request a new feature or any custom work. If the development were not done in-house, this could slow the turnaround for any of this.Also, if there were any issues with the telematics software, it would take longer for the fixes, since the development team is not in-house and could be half way around the world.
Does your telematics solution provide an array of configurable alerts?
First of all, you want to have more than a few alerts to choose from. The more options you have, the better. Secondly, alerts are only valuable if you can configure them to be the most meaningful to you. If they are not highly configurable, you will most likely not use them and will lose the bulk of the ROI you expected to see from the product.
Does your telematics solution have a mobile app?
You and your management team are not always at the office. It is important that managers be able to access the tracking software from a mobile app. The level of functionality of the mobile app is also worth noting.
What training and support services do you offer and how are they delivered?
As for most technologies, training and support are crucial. Your business is about to invest a lot of money in GPS tracking software, so you want to make sure your team knows how to use it. Find out if the provider offers free, unlimited training. Don’t be fooled by free training for new customers. Long into being a customer, you will have questions and as new employees are hired, they will need to be trained on the product as well. Also, make sure that the provider offers 24/7/365 support. You don’t want to be stranded if a problem arises after standard office hours.
Do you have experience with my market sector and my fleet size?
Obviously, it is beneficial to work with a GPS tracking company that has customers like you. They will already be familiar with your needs and likely be able to speak your business “language”. Making sure the provider has customers with a similar fleet size is particularly important for large fleets. You need to make sure that the telematics software can scale to your size. The way it works for a few vehicles does not imply the way it will work for many vehicles. This problem has arisen many times for large fleets, causing many headaches and costing more money when having to go back out to the market to find a company that can scale.
*Source: Automotive Fleet Magazine
