The MapQuest Platform: Extending Your Reach for Better Asset Tracking and Workforce Management

Today’s innovative companies are exploring the ways wireless mapping solutions can enhance asset and fleet management, workforce deployment, and customer communications. The MapQuest® Platform provides tools to build advanced mapping solutions that can improve the way you manage people and assets and connect with customers.

From transportation and service, to maintenance, and medical and emergency services – any organization with distributed assets or a mobile workforce can use the MapQuest Platform to develop wireless mapping solutions that improve the way it does business. Your custom wireless mapping solutions can promote more efficient routing, quicker response times, and smarter scheduling for greater ROI. You’ll have the mapping APIs and tools to create applications that can optimize the distribution of assets within a defined area and help you visualize and analyze field service activity.

Regardless of your industry (real estate, travel, etc.,) you can also create wireless mapping solutions with the MapQuest Platform that reach customers in new ways. You can give your on-the-go customers access to location information and driving directions from their mobile phones and other wireless devices — making it as easy as possible for customers to find you, while helping enhance your image as an innovative service-oriented business.

Tracking Athletes on a Fitness Course - Peaksware, LLC

Achieving Better ROI with Improved Asset Tracking and Utilization

Preserving the value of your assets and maximizing their effectiveness begins with knowing where they are. With the MapQuest® Platform, you can build wireless mapping solutions for fleet management that allow you to visualize and track the exact location of assets such as vehicles and equipment in real time, so you can make informed decisions on asset deployment.

Your custom asset tracking solution can also help you monitor the movement of vehicles and equipment within a pre-defined geographic area (a process known as geo-fencing.) You can integrate automatic alerts into your custom application to notify you when an asset enters or leaves a specific area allowing you to respond faster and make more informed decisions for your business.

The MapQuest Platform can convert GPS coordinates from a vehicle or asset into a street address, helping you locate assets through reverse geocoding. When a mobile asset breaks down, you can quickly pinpoint the location and dispatch a technician with turn-by-turn driving directions.

Optimizing Workforce Management and Deployment

Efficient workforce deployment can have a direct impact on the bottom line. With the MapQuest Platform’s advanced toolset and complete library of mapping APIs, you can develop wireless mapping solutions to manage your mobile workforce more effectively. By optimizing routing and scheduling, you can use less fuel and make better use of equipment and employee time in the field by scheduling more trips and service calls into a workday.

The MapQuest Platform allows you to build wireless mapping solutions with your custom data that help you visualize the locations of field personnel with GPS-enabled cell phones or devices, so you can coordinate their time and effort more effectively. Your dispatchers could then easily identify the technicians closest to the customer’s location or job site, review technician schedules and skill sets, and send turn-by-turn driving directions to the person who’s the best match for the job.

Your mapping application can incorporate visual representations of a route (known as “bread crumb trails”), so you can see where drivers or field personnel have overlapped one another over the course of a day. You can also customize your wireless mapping solutions to track idle time to monitor compliance with company policy.

Empowering Customers and Employees through WAP Applications

With the MapQuest Platform, you can build WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) applications and deploy custom mapping solutions for mobile devices. Your customers can use their cell phones or other web-enabled mobile devices to access information about your locations and services.

Also, your field employees can use your wireless mapping solutions to find the most efficient routes between stops, to search for materials or services they need in the course of a day, and to respond to urgent requests or emergencies in a timely way.

Connecting with Customers through Innovative SMS Locator Capabilities

The MapQuest Platform provides tools to build an SMS locator (Short Message Service) into your mapping solution to offer yet another way for customers to find you. With SMS, you can also push information on your locations and services to customers using text messages delivered directly to their handsets.

By keying your designated short code and a zip code into an SMS message, customers can receive text message replies that point the way to your nearest locations. You can then use the data you collect from these customer inquiries to tailor marketing strategies, analyze the search patterns of customers, and develop proactive marketing strategies – such as SMS promotions or coupons – that encourage customer loyalty.

Offering Customers Greater Flexibility with MapQuest’s Send to Cell

Through the MapQuest Platform, you can allow customers and employees to send location search results from a home or office computer directly to their mobile devices. You can also build custom voice-guided systems that lead callers through location requests.

Streamlined Data Management

MapQuest gives you access to simple tools to upload and manage information on your assets, workforce or business to help keep your website accurate and relevant. You can also manage your MapQuest account online and view and sort your data to meet your specific needs.

Building Your Brand with a Reliable Partner

MapQuest’s reputation as an industry leader can strengthen your own brand. Independent studies have shown that the MapQuest brand stands out as the most reliable, most visited, most trusted, and easiest to use online mapping service.* The MapQuest Platform allows you to incorporate the MapQuest® brand into your wireless applications so you can benefit from this association.

Ready to Transform Your Business with Advanced Wireless Mapping Solutions?

Contact MapQuest Platform Services today for more on how you can use the MapQuest Platform to develop wireless mapping solutions that help you manage assets more efficiently, deploy a mobile workforce more effectively, and forge stronger ties with your on-the-go customers.

*Keynote Systems Survey, September 2006; Landor & Associates, Brand Asset Valuator Study, June 2007 and comScore media metrics, US Mapping, 2004-2007 rates MapQuest as having the most Unique Visitors.