Last December, we visited Steve Minter at the Kentucky Department of Agriculture. Steve has been rolling out our Quadrant solution throughout the state in the vehicles he manages. The Kentucky Department of Agriculture is responsible for a wide range of activities, including:

• Regulation and inspection, (including every retail weigh scale in the state, eggs, amusement rides, pesticide use, and fuel pumps)
• Teens and tobacco
• A veterinary office
• A marketing division, (which runs farmers’ markets and promotes Kentucky agriculture products around the world)

Many people at the Department of Agriculture work remotely and by themselves. There are obvious safety concerns, which Steve has addressed using Quadrant to gain visibility into where vehicles are located. Steve helps ensure safety of workers by conducting remote physical vehicle inventory checks using Quadrant—something that was impossible to do before Quadrant. Steve has used Quadrant reporting to move from re-active to pro-active management of his fleet.

With innovative solutions like this, Steve’s long-term vision will provide a positive impact in all areas for which the Kentucky Department of Agriculture is responsible.  Customers, such as Steve, continue to show us new and innovative ways to use Quadrant on a day-to-day basis as a great telematics, automated GPS, and automatic vehicle location solution.

Making a big business change often feels like storm clouds are brewing on the horizon. Just as sailors must decide whether to stay safely in harbor, you must decide where the business benefits are and whether the storm of working through the change is worth it.

Today, every project involves IT in some way and there are no projects with more storm clouds than those involving IT. For years, IT project failure rates have been averaging 65% or more.

Creating business change success means focusing on a few key elements:

Business Case: The business case has to drive the change, not IT or technology. The business benefits you are trying to achieve must be clear, measurable, and focused on the results you want to achieve.

Executive Buy In: The senior executive team must buy in to the change and have clear insight as to why the change is taking place.

Project Plan: Key individuals must be identified and assigned specific who, what, and when tasks which they are held accountable to.

Organizations often change key business systems once a decade or two. Leading vendors are helping organizations successfully through business change every week. Their experience, people, and processes are what insure that projects finish on time, on budget, and solve the business problem they set out to solve.

At Webtech Wireless, we have seen lots of storms over the years of assisting clients make business change to use the information from our telematics solutions to make measurable change to their business, while taking the risk out of projects with our proven methodologies, systems, and people.

Do you have the all the knowledge and experience that you need to make it through the storm of business change of deploying an automated GPS and AVL solution?

Wayne County in Detroit, Michigan has released an innovative new portal called Compass. Combining information from many different sources, including real-time information from our InterFleet solution, citizens can see what is happening on their streets as they happen.
Dealing with snow and keeping roads clear is a challenge for Wayne County. In the article Wayne County drivers get high-tech link to roads, The Detroit News documents how Wayne County is deploying Compass so that citizens can both see what roads have been plowed and view projections of where the snow plows will be next.
Wayne County, like many of our clients, use the unique features of InterFleet to provide a seamless view to stakeholders by using the information interfaces of InterFleet to connect disparate systems together. The creativity of customers like Wayne County results in an enhanced user experience for the viewer.

As the article reminds us, InterFleet also provides critical information such as the speed of snow plows, salt usage, and coverage. Customers use this information over time to reduce their winter material costs by up to 30%.
How can you use real-time GPS and Automatic Vehicle Location information to create information for your stakeholders?

At the TMW Transforum 2011 conference, I was interviewed by Michael Carpentier, CEO of Big Truck TV on risks that keeps fleet managers away at night. Michael has published the interview where I share my thoughts on how to mitigate risk and let managers sleep at night.

As the #1 winter fleet GPS and AVL (Automatic Vehicle Location) solution in North America, we know what it takes to get ready for winter. All fall we have been helping organizations like the City of Chicago, Ville de Québec (City of Quebec), and the City of Ottawa prepare their winter fleets to be ready for when it starts snowing. We work with Departments of Public Works, Ministry of Transport, and Departments of Transport to give them the solutions they need for their snow plows and winter fleet operational information. Our years of experience have taught us that this is what to look for in a top performing winter fleet telematics solution:

Real-Time Information. When a storm event occurs, supervisors need to know what is going on in their jurisdiction every moment. Our InterFleet ten-second reporting and automatic map updates, means that you have the information you need to make decisions as events occur.

Working With You. We work directly with our winter fleet customers to prepare them for winter. We collaborate to make sure that everything is working before the first storm arrives. Because we work with the largest set of spreader controllers of any vendor, our customers know that their equipment will be reporting and responding correctly when it is needed.

Salt Management. We save our customers millions of dollars every year in the cost of salt, by monitoring and automatically adjusting the amount of salt being put down on the roads. We provide management with year by year reporting so that they can compare and improve their salt use and costs, no matter what the weather is.

It is easy to take it for granted that your streets are cleared when the winter storms arrive. The truth is that it takes a great deal of planning and work to make sure that everything is ready. Top performing organizations work with us to look after their citizens, while saving money, and ensuring that the roads are clear once the snow starts falling.

For six decades, National Foods has been dedicated to delivering fresh eggs from their rural farms to customers all over Everett, Washington.

With customer service as a main priority, Kevin Bookey, Transportation Manager was concerned on how to best manage their 160 drivers and over 90 tractors and straight truck fleet. Kevin knew he needed better accountability and visibility into what the trucks were doing every day.

Using the Webtech Wireless Quadrant solution, National Foods was able to save costs while improving efficiency. Everyday National Foods delivers their fresh farm eggs to a number of businesses, primarily restaurants, who require precise delivery times. Their business plan estimated that unloading and delivery should not take longer than one hour. Once Quadrant was installed, Kevin was able to narrow down and identify delivery stops that took as long as two and a half hours. Working in collaboration with their customers, National Foods was able to reduce the longer unloading times and increase the productivity of their employees.

As a family owned business, the owners often lose sleep worrying about the safety of their drivers and trucks. With the Quadrant solution, they receive the data they need to monitor driver behaviour, in order to reduce speeding and accident rates; giving the owners of National Foods a good night’s rest.

National Foods has had a positive change with customer interaction since implementing the Quadrant solution. Customer Service Representatives directly interact with Quadrant, allowing them to personally address customer’s questions about delivery times. Now, the customer is receiving more accurate information and the dispatchers are no longer interrupted with customer inquiries.

National Foods delivers their eggs using Webtech Wireless’ telematics solution. With Quadrant they are able to lower costs and improve customer service while lowering risks so that owners and managers can all sleep at night. All of this is for National Foods’ commitment so that that the people of Everett can enjoy meals made with the best and freshest eggs possible.

Mike Ward, Equipment Manager for Strike Construction, recently paid a visit to the Webtech Wireless head office. During his trip, we had the opportunity to sit down and gain a better understanding of Mike’s role and his use of our solutions. Strike Construction is a leader in pipeline integrity, maintenance, and new construction, focusing on the US Gulf States. When Mike joined Strike Construction in 2007 there were 187 employees. Today, there are over 1,800 employees and more than 450 pieces of yellow iron equipment used on their construction projects.

While Mike and his team have done amazing things with our Quadrant solution to track all of their equipment, his motive to visit us was to learn all about our products and facilities. This included visiting our top class manufacturing facilities and gaining insights into our build and delivery processes. The goal was to help Mike realize even more value from Strike Construction’s investment in Webtech Wireless telematics solutions.

Strike Construction use Quadrant to solve these business challenges:

Maintenance: Using Quadrant’s maintenance features, Mike is able to proactively schedule when equipment will be taken out of service for maintenance. The result is better equipment utilization and no unplanned stoppages due to unforeseen breakages.

Billing: Equipment use is tracked with Quadrant and reconciled to actual project costs and billing. When there is a difference it is immediately flagged so that it can be appropriately dealt with, often resulting in increased revenue when equipment used on a project was not fully billed for all the hours it was used.

Utilization: Strike Construction manages more than $40M worth of equipment. Company success depends on this equipment being fully utilized. By using Quadrant’s geofence feature, Strike Construction can insure where equipment is at all times. If an individual piece of equipment is idle for a day, Mike and his team can check with the division using the equipment to see if it can be used somewhere else.

Mike told us that even with all these successes, the additional training and knowledge that he gained by spending two days with us will provide even more value to Strike Construction in the future. In Mike’s own words, he said this about the trip:

“All in all, I would have to say this was the best thing that could have happened to further Webtech and Strike’s relationship.”

Our brand appears in everything we do with customers. This blog, our web site, our products, communications pieces, quotes, invoices, and statements all have our brand logo. If we had a fleet of vehicles, our brand would be highly visible on each and every vehicle too.

Our customers are in the same situation. Whether in transportation, oil and gas, transit, winter fleets, or government, the corporate or organizational brand is shown on each fleet asset. When those assets are operated in the way management requires they operate, those brand assets do a lot for an organization. But what if they are not being operated appropriately? What happens to your brand reputation?

We recently had a situation in which the president of an oil and gas field services company was driving down a two-lane highway in the oil patch of northern Alberta. He was driving along, obeying the speed limit, when one of his own company vehicles pulled out and passed him, rocking his car in the wake of the huge vehicle’s slip stream as it took off down the highway.  A short phone call later, the president knew exactly who had blown by him on that narrow northern highway.

It is management’s responsibility to know what is going on with their assets. With highly visible brands painted on the side of our vehicle assets out in the public, it is only with GPS based real-time reporting solutions that you can gain visibility and accountability into those brand assets. Do you know where your brand is today?

Making drivers productive makes the business productive. One of the biggest productivity gains is from getting drivers off the phone and on the road. Our Webtech Wireless’ solutions can be the key to unlocking the productivity of your drivers by using automatic vehicle location with two-way in-cab communication.

Rather than wait on the phone to be dispatched, drivers receive their next instructions on an in-cab unit.  As a manager, you know that the message was sent, received, and read. There is end to end accountability and visibility into what is happening. Good drivers want to be on the road, not on the phone, and telematics let’s them become great drivers.

What are you doing to make your drivers more productive?

Founded in 1881, Canadian Pacific (CP) is one of Canada’s oldest railway companies. Today, CP is leading a technological revolution applying technology throughout its operations and supply chain. Jim Barr, Business Manager, introduced our Quadrant solution to its InterModal operations (moving freight between trains and its customers).

Before Quadrant, CP’s drivers were waiting up to an hour to be dispatched—not just waiting for a call, but actually on hold for an hour. With the installation of Quadrant in all of its contracted delivery trucks, CP not only knows where each truck is, our In-Cab solution eliminates the need for mobile phone communication to dispatch drivers. Saving many minutes every day across hundreds of drivers is a significant cost savings for CP.

Many of CP’s primary customers run very large distribution centres. By using Quadrant’s geofencing features, CP has been able to identify distribution centres with very long stop times. In many cases, CP has a contractual agreement with the customer on the maximum amount of wait time at the distribution centre. CP is now able to work with those customers who are not meeting their contractual obligations.

In the words of Jim Barr, “CP saw a significant overall reduction in trucking costs by improving our fleet performance using Quadrant.”