What is Geofencing?
Geofencing is the process of defining a virtual boundary using GPS technology. Businesses use this GPS geofencing technology for various purposes such as restricting their employees to a particular location, monitoring employee activities in a particular radius, targeting customers in a particular geographic area, etc.
In this blog, let’s discuss the importance of geofencing software, and how it helps in managing your mobile workforce.
Purpose and Usage of Geofencing
There are a variety of geofencing features that can be used for different business purposes. Some of the examples are:
1. Marketing & Ad Campaigns
Businesses can use geofencing to locate their ideal customers and run ad campaigns for the target audience. Instead of marketing your product to a wider set of audience, you can filter out your ideal customers and promote only to them. This way you can cut down excessive advertising costs.
2. Personal Safety Purposes
By installing geofencing software on mobiles, you and your family members will be assured of each other’s location and you can also set alerts if any one of you is traveling to unsafe locations. This will be of great help to ensure safety during traveling.
3. Employee Tracking & monitoring
Whether your employees are expected to work from one particular location or multiple locations, you can set geofence accordingly. Particularly, most SMEs are preferring this technology as it saves excessive costs by helping in accurate payroll processing. There are features in some geofencing software to track and monitor employee activities in real time.
Apart from these purposes, GPS geofencing is also used in various countries for safety and security purposes in traffic control, speed monitoring, emergency purposes, etc.
Importance of Geofencing
A business has various benefits from using geofencing software. For example, high precision is helpful in marketing, employee tracking helps in improving productivity, and ensures safety. Some people are confused with geofencing vs geolocation. Geolocation refers to your exact location whereas geofence refers to an area.
How Geofencing Helps in Solving Mobile Workforce Issues?
Maintaining and managing a remote/mobile workforce has its challenges. To do this effectively, a business needs the help of geofencing software. Here are some ways in which it helps you in managing your mobile workforce:
1. Time Management
For a mobile workforce, arriving on time to meetings, completing tasks within the timeline, and other tasks are all time-bound. Also, calculating their working hours exactly is done by geofencing software.
For example, the Lystloc app has a customized reports feature Lystdata through which you can get periodic reports on employee total working hours, login logout times with location details, meeting check-in check-outs, etc. which facilitate businesses to manage their remote/mobile workforce effectively.
2. Employee Productivity
There is no secret formula to maximize employee productivity. But with geofencing software, you can achieve that. When there is a virtual boundary, employees will be aware and alert that they should clock in on time and take breaks only when necessary. Also, live tracking features show the exact location of an employee if he is traveling to client locations and thus you can ensure he is on track.
3. Accurate Payroll Processing
Payroll processing can be tedious if you don’t have accurate data. With geofencing software, you can easily calculate the right payroll for the employee’s working hours. SMEs can save a lot of time and money in this process too. Unethical practices like buddy punching or other fraudulent activities can be cut down. Overall the accountability of the employees will be improved.
4. Cost Cutting
Costs involving maintaining employee records manually in files, excess labor costs due to inaccurate working hours calculations, and fuel costs are all controlled by geofencing. This saves a lot of money and time in monitoring your mobile workforce.
5. Employee Safety & Monitoring
One important advantage of using geofencing for your business is that you can ensure your employees’ location, which helps in protecting your employees from any dangerous situations. For example, if they are deviating from the route to an unknown location, you can immediately alert and safeguard them by real-time monitoring.
6. Easy Scheduling
With geofence features, you can avoid meeting scheduling conflicts, overlapping times, etc. If an employee needs to travel to three client locations in a day, route optimization features help you with the route that requires less fuel and is time-saving. Arriving for meetings on time will enhance your customer experience as well.
Summing Up
Geofencing is a most useful tool for businesses especially when it comes to managing your mobile workforce. Geofencing software should also have features such as real-time location tracking, task management, etc to make it a one-stop solution for all the location-based challenges faced while monitoring your employees.
Lystloc app is one such holistic solution for a business as it serves all the employee tracking and monitoring purposes successfully thus helping in your business growth. Eventually, that is the main aim of any business, agree?
Also read: Benefits of IT Staff Augmentation
