ABM Industries Boosts Efficiency, Tech Safety with GPS Insight

When a leading provider of tailored services to construct buildings for various industries such as aviation, financial, and healthcare wants to better verify driver locations and enhance dispatching, the solution had better have its game on.

That’s precisely why ABM Industries turned to fleet monitoring and telematics leader, GPS Insight. The numbers alone could appear daunting: 524 vehicles to track in 31 separate locations.

Before the new fleet tracking solution, the various ABM locations never knew for sure where the company vehicles were. When emergency calls came in, it could take 30 to 45 minutes for dispatchers to call the drivers, check the dispatch logs, and identify which technician was the closest who could respond. ABM needed a more efficient system of handling emergency calls and identify where their technicians were at any given time.

Invoice Discrepancies with Customers
The company first turned to GPS technology to better track how long the technicians were at the customer site. “We often get calls from customers saying that they received an invoice, but they don’t think the technician was on-site for the number of hours we’ve billed for,” says Tod T., Safety Manager for ABM Industries. With no ability to verify or debunk these customer claims, ABM needed a solution that would do just that without having to go on the word of the customer.

Safety Concerns Over Vehicle Maintenance
The company also wanted to improve employee safety by being able to monitor vehicle location and view diagnostic and maintenance information for the company trucks. The safety of their technicians is a top priority for ABM, so having reliable and safe company vehicles for them to use is paramount. They sought a solution to help identify when important maintenance needed to be done on the vehicles so that it was no longer neglected.

What GPS Insight Did
ABM Phoenix selected GPS Insight in part because the vendor already had experience working with ABM’s other divisions. They also found an all-in-one solution in GPS Insight to improve their operational efficiency and technician safety.

Improved Time Management & Decreased Fuel CostsCustomer sites and parts suppliers have all been entered into the GPS solution as pin drops. When calls come in, dispatchers can see which ABM technician is the closest to each location and can dispatch the calls accordingly. This has dramatically improved time management and efficiencies within ABM’s workflow. Dispatchers no longer have to waste time calling and getting a hold of drivers to find out their location and who can get to the next location the quickest.

According to Pat S., General Manager of ABM Phoenix, “If we get an emergency call, the dispatcher can look at the screen and decide which technician is closest and provide the fastest response. This has made our ETAs to customers incredibly accurate.”

The executive added: “Our maintenance costs have gone down because we know when the maintenance is overdue on a particular company vehicle. We’ve also cut down on wear and tear on the company vehicles because we know they are only being used for business purposes.”

Improved Vehicle Maintenance & Driver SafetyBecause ABM gets notified when service on vehicles are due, maintenance costs and overall wear and tear has gone down since implementing GPS Insight. Wear and tear have also particularly declined because they know that vehicles are being used for purely company business reasons.

The new fleet management solution has improved ABM driver safety as well. In the case of severe weather events or other types of emergencies, ABM can refer to GPS Insight to see if any of their drivers are in a danger zone. The drivers are now protected and kept safe in these scenarios. Drivers also work alone, and in an instance of them not responding to a safety check, ABM can pinpoint exactly where the vehicle is to send help.

Decreased Customer Invoice Discrepancies

ABM drivers carry iPhone 6 mobile phones that run the FieldCentrix mobile application from Astea International. All of the dispatch information, work orders, billing, and repair data are presented through the mobile app. On the job site, the ABM technicians use the FieldCentrix FX Mobile application to enter all of the work order information and log their time. At the end of the week, the GPS data and FieldCentrix data are reconciled. ABM can also generate more accurate invoices because the company now has precise mileage and fuel usage data that wasn’t previously available combined with the data from FieldCentrix FX.

In conclusion, ABM noted: “We can see what actually happened if we get a complaint about speeding or reckless driving. Most of the time it’s never as bad as the caller made it out to be.”

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