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Issue 91
Rugged Hardware
Industry Specific Software
Full Service Support
www.touchstargroup.com
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 InTouch recently spoke with Craig Miller, Delivery and Fleet Manager of Skylands Energy, a fuel oil delivery company headquartered in Raritan, NJ, about their mobility initiative, how it has impacted daily operations and the company’s bottom line. For Skylands, eliminating paper, streamlining the billing process and increasing deliveries were primary objectives for moving to automation.
“We were swimming in paper,” recalls Miller. “Handwritten tickets, data entry and errors buried us. One driver’s ‘8’ is an accountant’s ‘6’. Each piece of paper was touched at least four times by as many people before an invoice was mailed. And still we had errors. And the forms”, he continued, “three- part tickets, inspection forms, DOT logs, manual calculations at delivery sites. Optimizing daily processes and eliminating paper was critical.”
After researching vendors and technologies, Skylands selected TouchStar as their mobility partner and hasn’t looked back. Electronic signature capture and middleware applications led the paperless charge. “Customers get a neat and professional invoice or proof of delivery on site. Its one accurate piece of paper that costs about a penny. Our three part forms were a nickel! Customers can pay then or mail payment from the leave behind. If they need a copy, it’s emailed or faxed the minute they ask for it. We slashed our stationary and postage costs, accelerated billing, greatly improved internal and customer account accuracy.”
Administratively, it’s completely changed traditional rituals. “Electronic posting takes just minutes at the end of the day and integrates to our back office system. Every customer account is current and available with one click access. When a customer calls for help, they get it right away. The days of ‘I’ll look for your file and call you back in a day or two’ are long gone.”
By shifting to automation, Skylands has slashed overtime, increased deliveries, greatly improved customer service, expanded their customer base and banked higher profits. “It’s the best thing we’ve done in five years,” says Miller. “Our first heating season with automation proved it. Historically, demand kept us a week behind and overtime was the rule. And if a driver got sick, it threw us back even further. Now there isn’t a hiccup. Everything needed to run deliveries is accessed electronically via the handheld and cuts hours of routing and re-routing, billing backlog and overtime.”
So what’s next? Miller mentions GPS, wireless communications and routing, but also Skylands service business. “In the old days, we made our profit delivering oil and service was thrown in because we were there. That doesn’t apply today. Growing our service business by extending the automation framework in place is the direction we are headed.”
We asked if he had any advice for companies thinking about automation. Without pause Miller simply stated, “Do it.”
•••••••••
Google gears up
 “These are the gears that power the tubes”…an apt, cheeky descriptor coined by Google for their radical new browser enhancement, Google Gears. Gears was announced to the world during Google’s Developer Day Conference in Sydney late May.
Google Gears is building web applications off line. While currently an early access developer’s release, Gears is supported on Firefox and Internet Explorer and will soon be on the Mac via Safari.
Taking AJAX (a handy acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) to a whole new level, Gears is a strategic foundation for Google’s next generation web applications. AJAX has become a common-place term for the machinery behind responsive internet applications and is essentially a loose description for an array of techniques designed to eliminate the pricey round trip fare of web applications.
Gears is amazingly elegant. It consists of three main features, all accessible by browser applications in JavaScript:
Local Server
 The ability for applications to work off line.
A web application is simply captured locally and enable to run with out an internet connection.
Database
 An in-browser database hinged on SQLite.
Web applications now has the ability to store large amounts of data.
WorkerPool
An extension to the browser’s JavaScript engine
Allows operations to run in the background the performance of the browser user interface.
As mentioned earlier, the main goal of Gears is to allow web applications to run offline. Google has channelled its wealth of experience to build a cache of cutting edge web applications. At this stage Gears has been enabled for Google’s Reader application and test drives are available at gears.google.com. Keep in mind this is a behind the scenes technology only and you won’t see Gears bear all its golden fruit until web applications adopt it as standard.
Strategically, as Gears grows, it might provide the foundation Google requires to build its next generation office applications. Most impressive is that Gears is open-source. Over time, Google will endeavour to build a strong development community around this new technology.
Some analysts are saying Google and its Gears does not pose a threat for Microsoft.
Others are saying this is a tremendous blow.
I mentioned at the start of the year that Google had to come up with something special this year.
Google Gears is IT.
•••••••••
 Handheld Applications
TouchStar a leading Field Force Automation software vendor has over the last 20 years, built a suite of handheld applications that operate in the Field Service, FMCG and Fuel Distribution industries. These include, ServiCE, RunnerCE, InStore and FuelWare respectively (both RunnerCE and InStore are FMCG applications). These applications are well deployed, operational and rich with business automation tools. The TouchStar applications benefit from context sensitive Alpha and Numeric keypads specifically designed to be easily operated by a finger eliminating the need of a stylus. This is a key efficiency feature that is both unique and intuitive.
Middleware and Enterprise Applications
Whilst our handheld applications are leading and established, their real power is unleashed through a growing range of middleware and enterprise applications. These applications manage the data and utilize the richness of collected information to deliver such things as mobility reporting, OH&S and Fatigue management functionality, Proof-of-delivery virtual document management, dynamic fleet management, GUI scheduling, messaging, and more. This combination including our proven, efficient and secure, topology agnostic, IP communications manager as well as our ERP interface manager delivers sophisticated business tools that, without fail deliver, enhanced business efficiencies and significant returns direct to the bottom-line, with ROI’s of less than 12 months (in most cases).
Appropriate hardware (handhelds)
I refer you back to our article “Best Price Guarantee” in our January 2007 issue of InTouch. Today, PDAs and other handheld devices are readily available and we recommend against deciding on a Field Force Automation Solution starting with the “Low cost” handheld. Not wanting to state the obvious, however, this is a business solution that is expected to deliver significant ROI’s and low TCO’s and the choice of hardware should be the result of a study of the real business needs rather than a technology review of the latest “gizmos’.
As indicated in the afore-mentioned article, TouchStar, conscious of the competitive nature of the handheld market, leverages its purchase power to deliver to its customers the best suited product for the task at the best available prices in the market. TouchStar supplies all the leading brands as a component of its solution on the basis of best-fit for the customers’ needs.
But wait, there is more!
Most Field Force software vendors are just that, software vendors! Some extend this to also supplying the handhelds, if pushed. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to a total turn-key solution!
Who installs the units in the vehicles (are they approved by the local road traffic authorities)? What happens when a unit fails, totally undermining the promised efficiency gains? Is it a finger-pointing exercise between the various suppliers, when you call for support, or do you just call one number and “presto” the issue is gone, solved, and your field force continues to operate with little to no disruption. And when the unit is replaced, is it “hot-staged”? And, who loads the software and ensures it is running before the unit is sent back to the field. And how many hours/days have lapsed? These are only some of the questions one should be considering at the beginning of the project, rather than after the ink has dried on the “successfully delivered system” and the final payment made!
Of course, one can take-on their own in-house support infrastructure. However, does this defeat the purpose of why one introduced new technologies and new efficiencies? Are we merely replacing our traditional staff with technical and support staff? Oh, “but we already have a technical team so this is no issue”! Really? Have you checked the headcount creep in the months/years following the deployment?
And finally, what about change management? Have we focused so much on the technical solution that we forgot the impact on staff, usually used to operating paper-based processes? Adoption rates of these new technologies are directly proportional to the change management efforts employed from the start of the project. This should not be an after-thought as the potential impact on the deployment can be significant of poorly managed and is an after-thought.
These and many more issues arise when one does not fully consider the impact of rolling out a solution that replaces established paper-based processes.
To be continued in next months Intouch where we discuss Touchstars; Nav-e-gate, Professional Services, Hardware and Electronic Engineering and Post Sale Support.
•••••••••
Commemorating the feature rich upgrades of TouchStar’s flagship LPG delivery and distribution software, we are pleased announce the launch of Gaspac™, formerly known as FuelWare/Propane.
Gaspac™ retains the core functionality of FuelWare™ while incorporating our latest innovations for comprehensive and optimized distribution management. Designed to meet the demands of today’s savvy marketer, Gaspac™ offers:
• A new suite of communications devices supporting GPRS and CDMA.
• A new suite of GPS devices which seamlessly integrate to our new FleetWatch™ and FleetMarshal™ Applications.
• Enhanced GPS functionality featuring Breadcrumbing and Event Driven GPS captures.
• Real time communications optimized to transmit by transaction for dynamic dispatching and fleet monitoring.
• Advanced contracts logic allowing for split pre-buys, multiple pre-buys and other contract execution tools.
For more information on Gaspac™ and please contact;
Americas sales.us@touchstarsolutions.com
+ 1 877 588 6824
Asia Pacific sales.au@touchstar.com.au
+ 61 2 9739 9000
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Turn Key Solutions |
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TouchStar Launches GasPac™ |
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