If you happen to be a manager in logistics, you are probably already familiar with the most commercially available types of mobile trackers and rely on some of them heavily in your daily routine. From predicting and planning deliveries to getting prompt notifications about contingencies, mobile tracking is simply indispensable in this line of work.
But what about other types of business, like production or services? At first glance, there isn’t much use in equipping the manager with a tracking tool – after all, automation and autonomy are the general trends everywhere, and this is unlikely to change anytime soon.
However, there are plenty of good reasons to consider such an enhancement. In this article, we shall examine how some managers have already stepped up their game by using a mobile phone tracker and suggest highly practical ways of integrating this tech into your workflow.
What Are Mobile Trackers?
Unlike hardware-based phone trackers like Apple’s AirTag, the tools in question are apps that rely on the phone’s built-in GPS capabilities. First emerging in the parental care domain as a means of monitoring your kids while away, these apps soon evolved to have an all-encompassing range of surveillance features. This is what an average tracker can do in 2024:
- Monitoring and recording calls, SMS, MMS, and contacts;
- Capturing keystrokes, screenshots and streaming/recording live microphone and camera feed;
- Receiving real-time GPS data and displaying it on a detailed integrated map (most often, OpenStreetMap);
- Tracking the installed applications on the target device;
- Controlling the target device remotely.
With powers like that, multiple new approaches to management become possible, and some early birds are already exploiting this innovation to its fullest.
Current Applications of Mobile Tracking in Management
We opened this article by mentioning logistics for a reason – after all, responsiveness and flexibility are the cornerstones of efficient management in this industry, and mobile trackers serve as a fallback data source for when the primary tracking means falter. Speaking of management applications in other industries, these are the examples we managed to find:
- Field services. Technicians or other field service providers are monitored in real-time for a fluid dispatching strategy that prioritizes smart deployment of resources to customer location. What is more, their field progress can be checked instantly, which gives you valuable updates on the current job status.
- Retail & Warehousing. Using a tracker app lets you prevent unauthorized access to restricted areas within the premises of your retail location. Coincidentally, this also mitigates the risks of theft and is even used for enhanced inventory management and staffing during peak hours.
- Construction. Trackers are used to great benefit on sites where hazardous activities like drilling and blasting are routinely performed. One look at the tracker screen lets the manager see if any of the workers are within the explosion or debris range.
Unethical Use
Of course, there are opposite cases where trackers are used for personal gain – often in a non-consensual, abusive manner. We strongly discourage you from the following activities, as they’re not only unethical but sometimes punishable by law – something that not even the best phone tracker app can avert:
- Relationship abuse. While some consciously prefer to never have any amorous affairs in the workplace, this is not a universal taboo. Settling scores or stalking someone with a tracker is not only devastating for the relationship, no matter how sour, but for your reputation as well.
- Industrial espionage. What better way to find out the details about the competitor’s secret project than by planting spyware into their phone? In this case, the exposed individual shall face both industrial espionage and personal space violation accusations.
- Excessive micromanagement. Exerting too much control is not much better than having none at all. Instead of relying on the phone tracker capabilities, managers must focus on setting clear goals, building trust, and ensuring competence and motivation in the workforce.
Untapped Potential
If you have not found any feasible applications for trackers among those described above, here are a couple of hypothetical management solutions for other business types:
- Healthcare. Tracking medical equipment and those entrusted with using it can prevent numerous accidents in and outside of a healthcare facility. In addition to that, the best mobile phone trackers can be tweaked to monitor equipment usage patterns and behavior of patients and workers.
- Sales. Again, sales reps can be coordinated more efficiently with the use of real-time tracking. To achieve this, consider implementing monitoring elements into their travel routes, customer interactions and overall working ethics.
Bottom Line
Though mobile tracking comes with numerous considerations, such as personal freedom and potential abuse, the benefits of its use in management are undeniable across all industries, if applied with reasonable limitations and precautions. Real-time monitoring brings us closer to fulfilling the dream of a 21st-century manager – a true, unrestricted ‘human-in-the-loop’ approach, where personal strengths are greatly enhanced with instant, insightful data.
