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Issue 90
Rugged Hardware
Industry Specific Software
Full Service Support
www.touchstargroup.com
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Excerpt from Mobile Enterprise Magazine June 2007
 They’re old, they’re outdated and they’re tying companies to a never-ending paper trail. In-house applications need mobile solutions, and the time to invest is now.
At What Cost?
Historically, going mobile has been a difficult and expensive undertaking—another reason some companies are still hesitant to take the plunge. But today’s vendors are offering solutions that simplify the process for businesses of all sizes.
Although implementing a mobile solution is not as complex or expensive as it was a decade ago, some companies are still hesitant to make the financial commitment. But once they calculate the long-term benefits to the company’s bottom line, many realize they can’t afford not to mobilize.
“It’s not cheap,” admits Craig Miller, delivery and fleet manager for Skylands Energy Service, a heating oil delivery company in Raritan, N.J. “But you start looking into solutions and realize this is something that’s going to save you money in the long run.” Skylands turned to TouchStar, a mobile software solutions provider, to work with Fuel Data Systems, the company’s back-office application. Prior to TouchStar, Skylands used three-part paper tickets, which cost about six cents a ticket. The delivery person would insert the ticket in the mechanical meter and turn the crank, and a register stamped the ticket with the zero gallon start point. After delivering the oil, he would have to handwrite the gallon amount on the ticket and manually calculate the price for the customer.
Now, the company has eliminated paper tickets in favor of handheld devices and replaced its mechanical meters with electronic meters and wireless printers mounted in the trucks. TouchStar was responsible for the entire installation. Not only has this sped up deliveries, it’s saved a lot of paperwork in the office and reduced the cost of a ticket to about a penny—the cost to print out a customer receipt.
According to industry research, some 50 to 60 percent of mobile implementations fail, says Claude Alexander, VP of TouchStar Americas. The reason: Many companies don’t fully understand how their business operates today. “If they don’t understand how many deliveries they make a day or how much time their employees spend dealing with paperwork, there’s no way for them to measure the success of a project,” says Alexander. “It’s important to understand where you are today and change your processes internally to deal with additional capacity in order to achieve a successful project and grow your business.”
Kassandra Kania is a freelance writer in Charlotte, N.C
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 The Aberdeen Group’s recently released report “Service on the Move – Driving Profitability Via Fleet Management” delivers a resounding “GO!” to distribution, delivery and transportation enterprises to get on the fleet management bandwagon. Historically a back burner optimization target to the more visible workforce and inventory initiatives, leading companies are implementing fleet management strategies to extend profitability and productivity from field work forces while maximizing fleet utilization and extending fleet life.
What is fleet management? If you answered vehicle operating costs and repair time, you are in the majority. However, the explosive development of optimization and visibility technology gives fleet management holistic definition through vehicle motion, location, mileage, speed and diagnostic reporting, travel pattern analysis, centralized and dynamic dispatch and fleet visibility, inventory monitoring and control, operator and regulatory compliance, operator monitoring, accurate service and delivery information. Extremely valuable data provides management fully integrated and centralized information for optimized transactional and executive decisions, reporting, and the ability to facilitate growth with existing assets.
In fact, according to Aberdeen’s findings, 63% of respondents reported that “management demand for increased visibility into operator and fleet related metrics and mandates to reduce operating costs were the primary drivers for adoption of business processes and solutions to improve fleet management.”
Early and current adopters of fleet management programs are solidly ahead of non-adopters. Best in class adopters are “twice as likely to achieve fleet utilization rates greater than 90% compared to their average and laggard counterparts”. And it doesn’t stop there: companies utilizing fleet management solutions reported “an average improvement in vehicle utilization of 13%, vehicle down time of 15.4%, operating costs of 10.4%, average travel time per job of 14.8 % and operator compliance of 29.7%.
What that means in real dollars is annual savings from reduction of operating costs alone can amount to ~ $1100.00 per vehicle. Simple math for a fleet of 500 vehicles reveals the ROI is less than 12 months!
And that is just the beginning. Fleet management applications can be leveraged with workforce and inventory optimization platforms for an enterprise wide view of operations. Empowered by real time, integrated, accurate and actionable data, companies can take definitive, quantifiable steps to sharpen the bottom line, extend customer satisfaction and ensure competitive position.
TouchStar’s new Enterprise Applications featuring scalable, flexible and intuitive fleet management solutions are engineered to deliver rapid ROI with best practice features and functionality.
As reported by Aberdeen, fleet management is the newest frontier in enterprise optimization.
If you’re thinking about fleet management, you should be talking to us.
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Surfing .NET
In early May I had the pleasure of attending MEDC 2007, Microsoft’s Mobile and Embedded Developers Conference. MEDC is a highly anticipated and regarded annual event spanning eight global venues with the series launch at the honorary MEDC Mecca, Las Vegas.
Windows Mobile 6, released earlier this year, was a topic leader and the lion share of break out sessions focused on the business side of mobility, clearly indicating the accelerating demand by Microsoft partners and implementers. Windows Embedded CE 6.0, released in late 2006, was runner up and centered on preparation for adoption.
There were exciting developments at MIX 07, Microsoft’s Web Developers and Designers Conference which ran concurrently with MEDC. Microsoft presented the full breadth of Silverlight® and how it fits into the company’s broader .NET platform effort. First unveiled at the National Association of Broadcasters Conference 2007, Silverlight® is Gates & Co. new cross-browser, cross-platform plug in for .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications. Silverlight® also serves as a leveraging tool for building and delivering applications on the .NET framework.
A direct competitor to Adobe’s flash technology and a core component of Microsoft’s strategy for the Web, Silverlight® powers rich websites, advertising and video streaming websites the likes of YouTube. Interestingly, Silverlight® alpha version 1.1 comes packaged with a scaled down .NET runtime, providing the same consistent development experience on the back of Visual Studio. The .NET runtime means that code can run orders of a magnitude faster than Adobe Flash Action script, which is an interpreted runtime.
Completing Microsoft’s aggressive foray into the designer space is Expression Studio. Expression Studio is an end to end tools platform designed for professional designers to boost collaboration with developers. Expression Suite is positioned to compete directly with Adobe’s Creative Suites, (Dreamweaver, Flash, InDesign and Illustrator), as it and Visual Studio are a part of the integrated tool set used to build Silverlight® applications. Watch out Adobe...
 The Silverlight® announcement crossed over to MEDC with demonstrations performed showing the same technology available on Windows Mobile devices.
Interestingly, Microsoft also showed off upcoming .NET compact framework version 3.5. Answering demand for rich internet applications on devices, Internet Explorer Mobile in Windows Mobile 6 was demonstrated working directly with AJAX for ASP.NET, a development milestone. A quick look at connectivity shows Microsoft is taking web services to mobile phones via e-mail which cleverly takes advantage of their Exchange push e-mail integration.
While technology and announcements abounded this year, it is clear that Microsoft is aggressively extending their .NET integration into areas unfathomable only a year ago. It’s apparent that .NET is a key development driver. Buckle up. If Microsoft is driving, history tells us its going to own the road.
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Khristen Chapin - Wireless & Mobility Editor
 Integrated Solutions Magazine, a recognized leader in the Wireless, Mobility and Field Service trade media, recently interviewed TouchStar CEO Peter Gibbs for his vision and assessment on 2006 and 2007 and what’s in store for the industry, as excerpted below.
Visit Integrated Solutions at www.integratedsolutionsmag.com for more highlights and articles on the issues, developments and leaders in this market space.
As 2007 continues to roll on, what can we expect from field service hardware and software? Continuing the executive interview series, I’m featuring interviews with two industry executives, which present the executives’ predictions for 2007 in their respective markets. This month, I spoke with Peter Gibbs, CEO of TouchStar…
ISM: Was 2006 everything you expected in terms of sales and lucrative vertical markets?
TS: 2006 was good for us in our traditional verticals – petrochemical distribution, propane (we have 7 of the top 10 propane companies in North America), fueling, and FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods). We’ve also had some new markets emerge: field service and utilities, fire protection, and pest control. These markets are showing signs of good growth.
ISM: Are there any emerging demands from end users in terms of mobile computing capabilities?
TS: The majority of our development is around middleware and back end integration. Customers no longer want a stand-alone ERP system that deals with processes and transactions, but want to seamlessly integrate that back end functionality with external systems – delivery forecasting, load planning, and route optimization. Those are third party systems, but they all need to be brought together as part of an ERP system. We’ve continued to build tools that allow that data to be shared and those systems to be seamlessly integrated. We’ve also built a number of tools useful to enterprises that are directly relevant and connected to mobility, yet are still focused on the overall enterprise getting benefit. One product is called TS Messenger, which connects text and e-mail and dispatch calling to an integrated messaging system to and from vehicles.
ISM: Are there any emerging demands from end users in terms of mobile computing capabilities?
TS: Our strategic thrust is unification of the handheld marketplace with vehicle systems. Whether DSD or service, companies have had one solution or the other, to the exclusion of getting everything they could possibly get out of a mobile solution. We’ve prototyped one device with hardware on the vehicle; drivers have a handheld and the vehicle hardware communicates with the handheld, transmitting GPS, diagnostics, fuel tax, and mileage data. We’re working with two household-name accounts that both want both solutions. We have an existing vehicle customer who is coming back for the handheld capabilities. Companies are seeing that having all of the info about the fleet, integrated into service and route management systems, is an important attribute. This is especially true with service companies, where you want to find the closest vehicle and then be able to push down a work order to the handheld.
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Quick on Your Feet |
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Tech Talk - David Thornley |
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2007 Mobile Forecast: Executive Speak Out |
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