2 page Case Study - Posted 2/6/2009
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Mapping Software Reduces Fuel and Vehicle Costs and Increases Service Quality
dESCO develops innovative software and solutions for the service industry. More than 4,000 companies use Electronic Service Control (ESC) software from dESCO to help manage their businesses. dESCO chose Microsoft® MapPoint® 2009 business mapping software to enhance the customer value of ESC, enabling dESCO to quickly adapt to changing client needs while simplifying its own development process.
Business Needs
Ft. Myers, Florida-based software vendor dESCO partners with its service industry customers to provide effective solutions to their business needs. Since its inception in 1980, the company has made it a goal to offer the best possible software and customer service. The company’s flagship product, Electronic Service Control (ESC), is currently used by 20,000 people at more than 4,000 companies around the world for service call and technician scheduling, service contract management, inventory management, and equipment tracking.
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MapPoint enables our customers to service their clients faster, and it reduces wear and tear on their vehicles and lowers monthly fuel expenditures. |
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Thomas Fanelli
VP of Sales and Marketing, dESCO |
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In 2001, dESCO began to incorporate mapping functions into the dispatch portion of ESC, but the mapping package it originally chose had serious problems. “When we tried plotting our test addresses, the software would sometimes locate them in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico!” says Thomas Fanelli, VP of Sales and Marketing at dESCO.
The company soon switched to Microsoft® MapPoint® 2002 business mapping software, which proved to be an ideal solution. “When we used MapPoint, it plotted flawlessly, and the maps really looked great,” says Fanelli. “Overall it just made our product look better.”
Since then, dESCO has continued to incorporate each release of MapPoint into the ESC package, enhancing the software with features like GPS integration, mobile device capabilities, and route optimization to offer increased value to customers. When dESCO developers heard about the impending release of MapPoint 2009, they stretched out the release cycle for the latest version of ESC so that they could include MapPoint 2009. “We knew our customers would want this version of MapPoint,” says Fanelli. “So we felt it was critical for us to support it out of the gate with release 9.1 of ESC.”
Solution
dESCO received MapPoint 2009 in mid-2008 and immediately began incorporating it into the new version of ESC using the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 programming model. Initial integration went quickly. “We found it very easy to migrate,” says Fanelli. “MapPoint 2009 worked really well with our .NET environment, and it took us maybe a day to do the integration. We came in in the morning, and by the time we left, it was running smoothly.”
ESC relies heavily on mapping symbols, and dESCO used the MapPoint 2009 upgrade as an opportunity to upgrade the ESC symbols as well. “MapPoint makes it easy to create your own symbols, so we designed our own custom set,” says Charles Cubbage, Senior Developer at dESCO. “Now we’ve enhanced the way we use symbols and we can keep using the new symbols with future versions of MapPoint as well.”
Once the company completed integration, dESCO put the new version of ESC through its own internal testing process and then rolled it out to customers who had volunteered to be alpha and beta testers. Twenty companies participated in the alpha program, and several hundred were part of the beta test. With testing complete, version 9.1 of ESC went into production in early October 2008.
In addition to the dispatch functions of ESC, dESCO now uses MapPoint as part of its mobile device and GPS solutions, as well as in its route optimization scheduling wizard. This enables field technicians to easily locate their next service call. “We can plot routes and print maps, or you can get turn-by-turn directions delivered via e-mail,” says Fanelli.
Benefits
By choosing MapPoint 2009 as the mapping solution for ESC, dESCO has enhanced the value of ESC for its customers while simplifiying its development process.
Enhanced Customer Value
dESCO customers rely on accurate mapping data for the complicated task of scheduling service technicians’ daily routes. MapPoint 2009 provides accurate data and allows developers to build useful functionality into ESC. “If a technician is using one of our GPS-capable devices, for example, we can take their current GPS coordinates and MapPoint will calculate the directions to their next service call and send those directions back to the technician,” explains Fanelli.
The ability to efficiently schedule service routes offers great benefits for dESCO customers. “MapPoint enables our customers to service their clients faster,” says Fanelli. “And it reduces wear and tear on their vehicles and lowers monthly fuel expenditures.”
As client needs grow and change, dESCO uses MapPoint 2009 to adapt accordingly. “Customers now expect more business intelligence data with their mapping. It’s not just ‘Show me a point on the map,’ but instead ‘Give me features to enhance my business productivity,’” says Fanelli. “Everything we’ve thought of doing with MapPoint is handled flawlessly.”
High-Performance Mapping
For speed and performance, dESCO has chosen a desktop-based mapping solution, rather than a Web-based alternative. “It’s more efficient having mapping information locally on a customer’s computer,” notes Fanelli. “MapPoint 2009 is very fast, and that’s a critical issue when dealing with customers in a high-speed dispatch center.”
Ease of Upgrading and Customization
As the integration with ESC 9.1 has shown, MapPoint 2009 has proven beneficial for the development team at dESCO. The team incorporated MapPoint 2009 in a single day, and the symbol customization abilities made it possible to enhance the value of ESC even further, while ensuring that future upgrades will go even more smoothly.
