| GPS tracking of employees can cut costs and increase sales: |
DenverPost.com
December 11, 2006
An interesting article has shown up at the DenverPost.com, about GPS tracking of employees . According to Larry Overley, president of Landtech Contractors, a landscape company:
"It cuts down on guys leaving the job site. It helps us with our payroll costs because guys can't fudge on their time sheet. We know when they get to the job, and we know when they leave the job," he said.
The system, in use for six years, cut labor costs at the Aurora-based commercial landscaping company by about 3 percent in the first year.
Another company has seen increased sales as a result of GPS tracking:
Plumbing company Roto-Rooter, which has 1,500 service technicians throughout the country, started providing techs with GPS-equipped cellphones more than a year ago, said Steve Poppe, the company's Cincinnati based chief information officer. Roto-Rooter technicians in Denver will be getting the phones in 2007.
The system is now used by about 390 of the employees in a number of cities. It assures the closest person to a customer who has called is the one dispatched. Drivers can also use it to find the location.
Many Roto-Rooter employees work on commission and don't get paid when they are driving to and from a call, Poppe said. The system helps them maximize their pay.
Roto-Rooter's GPS system is linked to mobile printers used to generate invoices at client sites.
When a technician begins generating an invoice, the system notifies the dispatch center.
The high-tech dispatch system has resulted in a 20 percent increase in service calls.
Privacy concerns are mentioned in the article, including this important reminder:
The issue gets particularly thorny when the person being tracked can't turn off the GPS device at the end of the day, said Philip Gordon, chairman of the privacy practice group at the Denver law office of Littler Mendelson.
"There might one day be a claim that the tracking is so pervasive that it was something like stalking, but there is no case law so far advancing that theory," Gordon said.
Both he and Orvis advise employers who plan to track their workers to let them know they are doing it, to tell them the reasons and to be sure that it doesn't go on after work.
Tell us how your company has used GPS to cut costs?
