What are Geofences?

If you have a dog, you may already be familiar with geofences. Although different in application, geofences are also a great tool for businesses. Geofences can be incredibly useful for businesses that can benefit from GPS fleet tracking, equipment monitoring, inventory management, and more.

What is a Geofence?

 A geofence is a virtual boundary that can be created to keep assets from leaving a certain area or alert you if an asset does leave the boundary. When it comes to dogs, a geofence may emit a sound or a small electrical shock to steer the dog back to your property.

Geofencing for assets sends the owner an instant alert whenever the vehicle or other asset passes the boundary you established.

Geofences are established using mapping software that allows users to draw a perimeter around a geographic area. Then, GPS trackers can be fitted to assets and connected to the mapping software with the geofence. If the asset passes through the boundary, you will receive an alert and see the location of the device.

Benefits of Geofencing

 Geofences offer many advantages to businesses, including the below.

• Reduce equipment theft. The most obvious benefit of geofencing is that it reduces equipment theft. For example, if you use GPS trackers on your equipment and vehicles, you will be able to track your equipment wherever it is. If you’ve placed a geofence around the worksite, you can see whenever someone takes any equipment off the site with them. Whether it’s an employee looking to take a piece of equipment home, or a thief that snuck in at night to lift some of your assets, you will know immediately if any equipment leaves the boundary you established. Once you know, you can contact the authorities and lead them to the location of your equipment.
• Reduce time theft. Time theft is another problem for businesses that have employees that work out of sight of supervisors and managers. Geofencing will notify you if employees go off route and complete errands during the day on company time. This will increase accountability and give you more insight into what employees are really doing during the workday.
• Increase efficiency. Knowing where all of your tools and equipment are isn’t just useful for preventing and catching thieves. It will also improve efficiency by cutting out the time required to search different areas for the necessary tools and equipment needed to get the job done.

Geofencing can help to decrease money lost to stolen and misplaced equipment, and employees running personal errands on company time, all the while increasing the organization of your business, and bolstering its efficiency.

For additional reading on geofences, check out our blog on the benefits of geofences for businesses to learn more.

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