What asset tracking software does your organisation need? Here are four key decision factors that you need to know to make the right choice.
Whether on land, at sea or in the air, a robust, reliable tracking software and hardware solution is critical to ensuring your team and assets remain safe.
However, if your organisation manages cross-vertical assets, finding a tracking solution that caters to them can be difficult — as many predominantly cater to organisations tracking one asset type, in one environment (For example vehicles, fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, boats).
To help operations managers with complex asset management processes find the right asset tracking software solution, we've listed our top four consideration factors below. For a complete buyer's guide to asset tracking software make sure you download our eGuide, A practical guide to selecting asset tracking software for your organisation.
Modern technological ecosystems hinge on openness and connectivity. The internal and external systems and solutions you implement within your organisation must be able to speak to each other. If the various systems you use are closed off from one another, you lose efficiency across all areas of your business, jeopardise growth, and create additional work for yourself and your team.
Applied to tracking, this requirement for openness means that whichever provider you choose must offer two things: integration with your existing systems and the ability to be used with whatever hardware meets your needs and regulatory requirements.
This hardware agnosticity is particularly critical if you’re managing and tracking assets across multiple spaces (land, sea, and air, for instance), as it enables you to mix and match terminals according to your specific mission and regulatory requirements.
TracPlus integrates with a growing number of third-party tracking providers, flight bag applications, Bluetooth and RFID solutions, and SaaS providers. We also support and allow cross-device messaging between leading industry hardware like v2track, Rock Seven, and Garmin.
If you’re involved in contract, emergency, or government work, cross-agency sharing is of the utmost importance when you’re choosing a tracking provider.
Selecting a provider that can help your organisation provide detailed tracking to all parties can improve your bottom line as agencies tend to look favourably on providers that offer cross-agency sharing; this type of interoperability network enables them to immediately respond to situations as required.
It’s critical that all involved parties in these types of work have comprehensive situational awareness at all times and are able to track their respective assets without interruption.
With many federal and state agencies across the world now outsourcing the operation of high-value assets such as aircraft and helicopters combined with the fact that multiple different organisations have disparate personnel, resources, and assets working together there is potential for disconnection and loss of visibility — all scenarios that your chosen tracking provider should help you avoid.
TracPlus's immense software and hardware integration capabilities mean it can easily share data through third-party providers to allow real-time tracking, messaging and reporting between you, your employees and contract workers.
When it comes to communication, it pays to ensure all your bases are covered—especially in mission-critical situations where being reliant on one method of communication puts you, your team, and your assets in a dangerous position.
Take the 2020 wildfires in Australia, for example; the firefighting units had cell tracking in most of their vehicles, but the blazes burnt the cell towers down, rendering those networks useless.
In mission-critical situations it's vital to eliminate any element of communication risk, this means having communication redundancy. The provider you select should offer communication resiliency in the form of two-way communications across text, email and voice channels should you encounter any communication challenges. SOS alerts should be immediate in the event of an inconsistency or emergency, and the service should utilise the most readily available backhaul channel (cell coverage, satellite networks (ideally Iridium for its complete pole-to-pole coverage), radio, and LoRa (long range wide area) among them) to ensure consistency and cost efficiency of service.
TracPlus utilises a range of communication networks, linking with Iridium, a global network of satellites to ensure uninterrupted communication no matter where you are in the world.
Flexible working environments have become synonymous with modern business. If you want to maximise your return, ensuring your system has remote access is paramount to ensuring all workers have what they need to do their job.
Look for providers that utilise the cloud. Cloud access offers flexibility and mobility, allowing you and your team to view data, dive into insights, and make decisions whether you’re all in one place or scattered across the globe.
It also affords you security; because cloud systems aren’t tied to a single data centre, you have consistent, reliable access to your information no matter what. If something like a natural disaster occurs and compromises one centre, the cloud infrastructure simply shifts your data to a different server in a different location, without interruption to your operations.
TracPlus is a smart tracking provider, a software as a service (SaaS); utilising the cloud to make managing, accessing and sharing your organisation's tracking information between required browsers and devices fast and secure.
Get more guidance and information on selecting the right asset tracking solution for your organisation, download our eGuide: A practical guide to selecting asset tracking software for your organisation.
TracPlus is the trusted real-time tracking and communications platform of first responders, government agencies, militaries, and other critical operators around the world. TracPlus believes in the power of coordination and collaboration and understands that every second counts when it comes to firefighting and emergency response. TracPlus’ powerful platform allows organisations to track, manage, monitor, and message their personnel and resources — including land, maritime, and aviation assets — to keep crews safe, conserve resources, and maximise coordinated efforts. TracPlus offers an open hardware ecosystem that allows multiple agencies to coordinate and collaborate, providing greater and more accurate situational awareness in every situation.
With Damien joining, TracPlus aims to enhance tracking solutions and protect more people in dangerous environments.
"The future of our industry hinges on connectivity, and TracPlus Beacon represents our first step to capitalise on this shift."
Lone and remote workers face unique risks, this blog explores how technology can be leveraged to enhance their safety.