It's no secret that GPS Tracking systems for commercial and government organizations is my thing. The number one most common turn down I would get when I used to sell these systems is, "we have no money". In today's economy, maybe you don't have even a dollar extra in the budget. But what if I told you how the first step in planning for a GPS Tracking system might save you a huge amount of money and cost you noting, except the effort of asking people to do their jobs?
A few years ago when I used to work for the US government I got assigned a task that I suspect no one else wanted. Our work was providing support for some large US Air Force organizations world-wide. In its most common definition "support" usually translates into "money", and like most government organizations no matter how much we had, lean years or fat, there never seemed to be enough.
Long story short I got the task of justifying, finding funding for and installing a GPS Tracking system on this organization's fleet. The justification was easy from a number of security, safety and operational reasons. And from the most important one ... the boss wanted it done.
In order to find out how steep a hill I had to climb to satisfy the funding part of the task, it seemed my first task was to find out how many vehicles were in the fleet. Turned out that wasn't as easy as it should be, but eventually I came up with a reasonably believable number of 2100 +/- (Can you imagine a government organization not knowing what they own? believe me it is more common than you think). There was no way I was going to be able to find the funds for a project of that scope in one year, so I tasked the people in charge of the three locations where these 2100 vehicles "lived", about 700 each, to give me a list of their top 100 each. The boss always wanted to do things in a manageable "pilot program" fashion anyway, and I knew I could beg, borrow or steal enough for 300 or so systems.
Well you would have thought I had asked them all to marry their daughters, sell me their first born sons and solve Rubik's Cube puzzles behind their back, blindfolded. Directives from the "front office" are never popular, but the hue and cry this one raised was beyond belief. In only an hour or two the hue and cry had reached be "big boss's" office and my phone range, summoning me to the carpet in front of the "man" ASAP.
Off I went, puzzled over what I had done wrong and how much trouble I was in. But when I got in front of the desk, I got a warm greeting, a smile and an invitation to sit. With a sigh of relief I sat and was surprised to hear our three star general, the "CEO", break into laughter.
"Dave", he began, "Do you know why you stirred up such a hornet's nest"?
I allowed that I really didn't and the boss's reaction surprised me no end.
"This just proved to me what I have suspected for years,' the boss explained. "These guys in the field don't really know what they have." The boss followed with a directive to prepare a letter from him to the complainers, with a lot of specific directives abut information he wanted on his desk in two week's time.
Well the letter got sent ... to this day some people still hate me for that project ... but the results that came back? Mind blowing.
Across the 2100 vehicle fleet a total of nearly 300 vehicles were declared surplus and sent to other government or charitable organizations. More that 25 vehicles were found to have not existed for years, and dozens were identified as having been carried with the wrong identifying information for ages ... sedans indented as cargo trucks, snow plows identified as golf course maintenance vehicles, etc.
I really hesitate to say what was saved by this one "comprehensive, do it now!" report, but it's easy to prove it totaled up to over a million dollars in just one year's cost. Many millions more in the out years. Not bad for a little whining and criticism I feel. I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to stir up that "nest". It saved all of us, as US taxpayers, a small fortune. And with the vehicle inventory under control, we were able to equip the "right candidates" with a highly effective GPS tracking system that became a very effective tool in saving even more money.
So if you are a business owner, division chief, school superintendent, county motor pool manager, etc.,do you have the gumption to save your organization real money in today's tight times, GPS tracking or no GPS Tracking?
Dave Starr --- Mr. GPS. Designer, implementer and operator of large government and commercial GPS tracking systems. Former small (GPS Tracking) business owner. Blogger and GPS "curmudgeon at http://www.satviz.com and http://www.gpsbus.com
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