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Issue 86
Rugged Hardware
Industry Specific Software
Full Service Support
www.touchstargroup.com
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 This year the TouchStar – UPS Logistics alliance rolls out MobileCast, easily the most exciting development of our mobility partnership. The combined offerings deliver realtime route visibility and dynamic route modification, giving our customers ultimate control over their fleets. In 2006 TouchStar introduced route optimization solutions from UPS Logistics Technologies as an integrated feature to our existing delivery and management software. In 2007, we raise the mobility bar by incorporating the newest technologies and what the mobility industry mandates as essential to thrive in an ever increasing competitive market.
TouchStar integrates MobileCast’s powerful dispatch and tracking software with wireless networks to our adaptive automation solutions to provide real-time route visibility. Dispatchers and business owners can pinpoint driver location and delivery status information throughout the day.
Enterprises are empowered to dynamically modify vehicle routes, maximizing driver productivity and quantifiably reducing fleet maintenance expenses. Customer service reaches new highs as delivery windows shrink and will calls are expedited.
MobileCast and TouchStar mobility platforms are feature rich:
• Increased Driver Productivity and Efficiency – Reduces wasted time and mileage through the use of GPS vehicle tracking to ensure that drivers follow the most efficient and cost-effective routes.
• Increased Delivery Accuracy – Tracks all delivery points and provides tools to reconcile product quantities for accurate invoicing in real-time.
• Real-Time Route Execution – Creates route plans or assigns routes dynamically to drivers and tracks what route is executed by each driver.
• Proactive Customer Service – Customer service staff continually receive up to the minute information on arrival and departure times and transaction status; MobileCast reveals potential customer service issues before they become problematic.
• Management Reporting – Operational performance targets are achievable with MobileCast. By reviewing real-time reports, enterprises track daily actual versus planned routes, any route exceptions, delivery and driver performance reports.
The bottom line benefits are quickly realized. Customers report substantial operational improvements and increased profitability through:
• Improved customer service and satisfaction
• Increased driver productivity
• Maximized labor utilization
• Reduced fleet mileage
• Reduced vehicle expense
• Enhanced competitive agility
The synergies created by MobileCast and TouchStar bring new efficiency benchmarks to organizations with mobile workforces. By combining our collective strengths, adaptive mobile platforms and world class, real-time routing and dispatching software, we are uniquely positioned to deliver qualified, cost effective, comprehensive mobile computing and automation solutions.
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A business solution not a hardware technology purchase
 An organization has a once in a lifetime opportunity to turn manual Field Force operations and paper intensive processes and procedures into a significant contribution to the bottom-line. ROI of less than 6 months with a 20% bottomline contribution is the average, rather than the exception.
Is this your experience?
If not, then there is a likelihood that a technologist has taken your organization down the path of looking at attractive consumer handhelds that “cost next to nothing” (and I underline cost). They then
developed a custom or deployed an inappropriate application that in their mind was the best “technology” solution with all the latest bells & whistles and buzz words. They didn’t look holistically at the Field Force operations and business opportunity, therefore unable to turn it into a massive contribution to the bottom-line introducing new efficiencies, enhancing processes and turning your Field Force representatives into advocates. Chances are what you ended-up with are the latest technologies that do nothing to enhance your bottom-line or introduce real efficiencies. A significant cost to your business with inappropriate technology, business disruptions and undoubtedly ongoing and unexpected costs in trying to retro-fit this latest technology and turning it into a business tool.
But you saved heaps on the handhelds!
In order to avoid this and to give peace-of-mind to our prospective customers, TouchStar issues a “Best Price Guarantee”. This guarantee ensures that TouchStar will match* the best offer in the marketplace for any client implementing an industry-leading TouchStar solution.
Why is this important?
The object is the business not the technology. The imperative is to ensure business continuity, ROI, enhanced processes, lowered operational costs, an empowered and efficient workforce, real-time reporting, information on-hand, efficient work and “paper” flows, legislative compliance and better
profitability and more importantly ongoing efficient support rather than the latest Mobile 5 device. You would be surprised that many of the very successful businesses running TouchStar solutions today are still utilizing DOS (technologists would squirm at this). These businesses are only now starting at moving into CE type environments. And yet these businesses and their Field Force praise their technologies (absurd a technologist might say!). Why? Well, the imperative is met and exceeded. These “archaic” solutions contribute significantly to the bottom-line.
 Now we are not advocating a DOS solution in 2007. It would be irresponsible and ludicrous for TouchStar to propose anything but a CE or Mobile 5 solution. However, the point here is that the technology is merely a platform and should not be the focus of the client organization. The client organization should pose the business needs problem to the potential supplier. It becomes the supplier’s challenge to meet the ROI or other objectives through the right technologies.
The TouchStar way
As part of our proprietary 8 point process, there is an identified project stage where the hardware platform is evaluated. This is for many reasons and mainly as follows. The first stage of the 8 point process is a Business Process Review (BPR). The BPR is, just that, a review of the various relevant
business functions that need to be taken into consideration in deploying a Field Force Automation initiative. 20 years of experience mean that TouchStar knows exactly what to look for at this stage. The end result of the BPR is a report that articulates, amongst other things, anticipated ROI and recommended technologies. The recommended technologies take into consideration such things as costs, memory required, processor performance, field force type, operational environment and other specifications required such as scanners, printers, cameras, intrinsic safety, etc…
At this stage, TouchStar quotes the ideal product and recommends to the client that they research the market (if they so prefer) to find a better deal/option, within the spec). In most cases, the TouchStar offer is very competitive as we have volume arrangements and we pass the savings to the customer. However, in cases where a customer identifies a better offer, TouchStar matches this offer.
In our previous article last month, we highlighted why it is imperative for the client to avoid the fingerpointing exercise by limiting the number of suppliers around the solution, to one. The “best price guarantee” ensures that, once again, the finger-pointing is eliminated.
We look forward to introducing you to a TouchStar Solution and that 2007 is a prosperous year for you and your business.
*Conditions apply. Ask our Business Development Managers for more information.
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TouchStar is pleased to announce the appointment of David Krapff as Vice President of Sales and Marketing for America’s. Mr. Krapff is in charge of implementing and managing market growth and profit strategies for direct, channel and distribution sales.
He brings over 20 years of marketing and sales expertise in technology products, including ERP and CRM software, as well as experience in recruiting, training and building effective, sizable sales teams in worldwide and domestic markets.
Prior to joining TouchStar, he served as the Director of North American Sales for EXACT Software, a Netherlands based international developer and marketer of ERP and CRM programs, with revenues topping $240 million annually.
TouchStar CEO Peter Gibbs counts the appointment as a solid step in bolstering TouchStar’s domestic and global market penetration, “We searched long and hard for David Krapff. His experience, dedication to success and expertise in our primary markets is exactly what we need to foster progressive, targeted growth levels. 2007 is going to be a very exciting year for TouchStar and our customers and partners.”
Mr. Krapff echoes Mr. Gibbs, “TouchStar is an organization with wells of talent, determination, drive and leading technology; rare commodities under one roof. I welcome the opportunity to help propel the company to higher levels of performance, service and profitability and harness the true assets of this company. I have every confidence 2007 is going to set records.”
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Happy New Year! And new is the operative word regarding Information Technology. On the heels of my 2006 technology wrap comes my top predictions for 2007:
Microsoft’s hot new .NET Framework 3.0 will seed the next generation of web enabled applications.
While AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) web applications were all the rage in 2006, I found these techniques cumbersome to develop, test and maintain. Count on Microsoft to up the ante by strategically crafting their .NET initiative to provide an extremely robust foundation for next generation web applications under WPF, WCF, WWF, and WCS. Microsoft may re-brand these in 2007, yet the capabilities and experience won’t change: a web experience beyond your wildest dreams.
 WiMax and VoIP will challenge existing telecommunication business models.
Wireless networking has solidly proliferated and the new breed of wireless will be seen in WiMax (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access). While I doubt WiMax cell phones will populate the market in 2007, we will begin to see minor wireless internet access networks form. Wireless data costs are modelled to sustain revenue in voice services, yet as demand for wireless data access increases, this model may becomes obsolete as competitive forces redefine the market. VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) will have dramatic impact on this emerging technology, existing telecommunication business models and the overall market landscape.
Google’s explosive growth might come to an end.
If Google does not shake the world in 2007, its growth is going to tumble. In 2006, Microsoft started transitioning portions of their MSN services to Microsoft Live, a “window dressed” formidable competition to Google’s grassroots services. How will Google shake up the world this year? By making a dramatic leap forward with online office services (spreadsheets and documents) or exploiting their purchase of YouTube for social networking and media content distribution. It’s a make or break scenario…
Windows Vista and the release of Longhorn Server will mark the start of wide adoption in the enterprise.
Administrators and integration specialists roll up your sleeves... Windows Vista will be an instant hit at the OEM level for new PC owners and the improvements Microsoft has made in security and administration will persuade their biggest enterprise customers to upgrade. Microsoft has been working closely with their customers to ensure that the ‘Vista and Longhorn Server’ is a categorical success.
 Mobile device management and security will be hot buttons.
Push e-mail is merely the beginning; 2007 will see businesses start to seamlessly connect remote devices across organizational lines. The synchronization of sensitive personal and corporate data, like calendars and task lists, is already available via a cradled Windows Mobile device. We are starting to see tangible inroads to seamless remote synchronization, allowing third parties to provide remote monitoring, policy control and security services for field devices. Microsoft has expanded Exchange Server to accommodate remote device management with policy control to the extent that devices can be erased remotely if reported lost or stolen.
Microsoft will hint at the possibility of supporting Linux for .NET interoperability.
As a result of recent Novell negotiations, we may see Microsoft strategically providing support for a subset of .NET on the UNIX platform. This opens up the door for MacOS X and Linux as well. In fact, Rotor, a little known shared source implementation of the core of .NET, has been available for years. It currently supports Windows, FreeBSD and Mac OS X. At this stage, Rotor is only licensed for educational purposes, but who knows what else is up their sleeve…Microsoft Linux?
Something totally unexpected will happen. Often, totally unexpected advances have the most impact. I have a strong feeling something unexpected will happen in 2007.
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Mobile Enterprise Magazine
February Issue in a feature on rugged deployments.http://www.mobileenterprisemag.com
NPGA 57th Annual Southeaster Convention & International Expo
April 14 – 17 2007 at the Georgia World Congress in Atlanta. Visit Booth 720 for a hands on look at the newest mobility technology and don’t miss the Information Technology Panel, featuring TouchStar, Blossman Gas and Rural Computer Consultants. http://www.npgaexpo.com
AREE ’07 - Atlantic Regional Energy Expo 2007
April 23-26 at the Atlantic City Convention Center in Atlantic City, New Jersey. TouchStar is bigger and better than ever as a Marquee Exhibitor in Booth 318. Come see what’s new in mobility for the fuels market as well as our ServiCE solutions for HVAC and service techs. It’s a new show format this year and not to be left off the calendar. http://www.areetradeshow.com
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MobileCast Provides Real Time Route Visibility |
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Best Price Guarantee |
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New Vice President for Sales and Marketing for America's |
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Tech Talk with David Thornley |
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