Business world finding more ways to use GPS technology
location based services
The Kansas City rental and transport company uses GPS technology to track the harvesting machinery down to the row of corn.
From desktop computers at MachineryLink’s West Bottoms headquarters, employees can watch harvesting progress throughout the U.S. and Canada and monitor the number of hours remaining on any given rental agreement.
That means the company’s trucks can collect the equipment almost the minute one farmer finishes and deliver it to another customer.
Equipment is used more efficiently and customers get machines on time, said Jim Bramlett, vice president of logistics.
The company is into the second season of having farm machines equipped with the technology.
Before, Bramlett said, “we would bug the heck out of our customers” checking their progress.
Global Positioning System technology, which uses government satellites to pinpoint locations, is becoming increasingly pervasive in the business world.
Sure, the consumer market is sizzling for personal navigation devices and GPS-enabled cell phones. But with falling prices in recent years, the technology — which has been available for commercial use since the 1980s — now can be found at work in virtually every industry tracking equipment, goods and employees.
Experts say GPS is taking the guesswork out of many business transactions and improving efficiency. Within the next decade, some say, even the smallest mom-and-pop companies will be forced to use GPS-enabled equipment.
“The companies that don’t have it are at a competitive disadvantage going forward,” said Marcus Torchia, an industry analyst with Boston-based Yankee Group.
Growing market
Large companies have long used GPS technology to track and route fleets of service vehicles. Similarly, the technology has been a staple in long-haul trucking for some time. But until relatively recently, the cost of the technology kept it out of reach of most smaller companies.
But prices of GPS systems and the applications that drive them have fallen dramatically in recent years and should continue to fall, analysts said.
Just looking at what consumers are paying is illustrative. Today, personal navigation devices are available off the shelf for as little as $200. Only a few years ago, before such portable devices were available, a comparable, custom-installed system would cost $5,000 to $7,000.
Of course, commercial systems aren’t quite so inexpensive. They must, for example, link to a company’s back office, include tracking technology that works inside a building, or have other professional-grade bells and whistles. But they do cost less than they used to, a reflection of the declining price of the hardware and software they’re made from.
A computer chip that a few years ago cost around $50 today can cost as little as $15 to $20, said Thilo Koslowski, a vice president and automotive analyst with research firm Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Conn.
“It is a big, big improvement,” he said, adding that lower-priced chip sets alone wouldn’t bring the technology within reach of many smaller companies.
Other things, like map data and applications used with GPS devices, also have become more widely available and, therefore, less expensive.
Today 30 percent to 40 percent of fleet operators use “telematics” services, data-sharing applications that rely on GPS technology to link an employee in the field to the home office. In the next five years, Koslowski said, 60 percent to 70 percent of fleet operators will have the services.
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