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Press Release: March 9th, 2006FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ALK announces FleetCenter and CoPilot Live Professional
CeBIT, Hanover - 9th March 2006 ? ALK Technologies today formally announced it's powerful new integrated GPS navigation and Fleet Management solutions designed specifically for business use: FleetCenter and CoPilot Live Professional. Developed in partnership with leading organizations which are already deploying the solutions, and incorporating fleet management technology developed over 27 years by ALK, the new products combine seamlessly to provide businesses of all sizes with the ideal combination of commercialgrade GPS navigation, real-time asset location-tracking, fleet optimization and management. Based on an intuitive web interface, FleetCenter integrates with the CoPilot Live family of GPS navigation products to provide real-time location information and data about the entire fleet. Vehicle location data and other information is reported to FleetCenter via a mobile Internet connection, providing visibility of the locations of mobile assets in real-time. Fleet Managers can monitor particular groups of vehicles and filter by group, status or estimated time of arrival. Businesses can locate the nearest available vehicle and send a new destination to it, for example a customer address. The driver can then simply accept the new destination at the touch of a button to add the new address to their itinerary. Fleet Managers can forward tracking links via e-mail to customers, so they will know when to expect a delivery or service to arrive. It is also possible to send messages directly to an individual driver, or even broadcast them to the entire fleet. Messages are displayed on-screen with simple one-touch response buttons that avoid distracting the driver. FleetCenter provides a variety of advanced features to help managers better manage and remain in control of their fleet. Exception reporting provides a variety of useful real-time information, for example notification about excess speeds, late starts and non-moving vehicles. The geofencing feature can provide alerts when a vehicle enters or leaves a predefined area. Historical reports can be generated for review and audit purposes, including overall fleet summary and performance statistics as well as individual reports, for example position history. CoPilot Live Professional provides powerful GPS navigation for Pocket PC devices that businesses can rely on to help their mobile teams reach locations easily and safely. The system incorporates a number of business-specific features such as the ability to enter-in up to 50 stops for complex itineraries, stop-optimization on the mobile device to work out the best way to take and a 'Request Assistance' button that sends alerts directly to base. CoPilot Live Professional integrates with the award-winning FleetCenter to provide seamless multi-vehicle tracking, messaging, remote itinerary updates and a variety of real-time and historical reports. CoPilot Live Professional is already being deployed by leading organizations in Europe, for example Tesco.com, The Bavarian Red Cross, Scottish Water, Drive Assist and RAC Inspection Services. Enterprise solutions include a comprehensive Software Development Kit (SDK) to enable seamless integration with existing mobile applications. "The combination of CoPilot Live navigation and FleetCenter provides small businesses with integrated navigation and fleet management which previously only the largest commercial fleets could afford" said Dan Popkin, Sales Director, ALK Technologies Ltd. "It provides cost effective 'Fleet Management in a box' for small businesses, while ALK's comprehensive software development kit enables seamless integration with corporate systems, enabling organizations of all sizes can benefit from real-time asset management, reduced costs and improved efficiency" Bob Monk, Operations Manager at Drive Assist remarked "We integrated CoPilot Live Professional with our field mobility solution, TBS TaskMaster®, to improve customer service, enhance business efficiency, reduce fleet costs and create real-time visibility. The integration is proving to be very effective having enabled Drive Assist's average delivery time to be halved while simultaneously creating a projected savings of 3.6 million miles per year and increasing fleet utilization by 15%." Jon Higgins, IT Director at Tesco.com commented "We integrated CoPilot Live Professional with our delivery scheduling system in order to provide increased customer satisfaction and reduce our delivery times. CoPilot is a great example of how mobile technology can deliver improved customer satisfaction and real productivity gains, helping our drivers to find their way to customers efficiently and easily without having to consult a paper map or worry about how to get to the customer address." CoPilot Live Professional is available as an easy to install package for small businesses from around �250 including a 6 month subscription to FleetCenter multi-vehicle tracking, messaging and remote itinerary updates. FleetCenter is available from �4 per vehicle per month as a managed hosted service or as a self-hosted server edition for installation on a client's network. The solutions are customizable and scalable for Enterprise integration. About ALK Technologies, Inc. ALK's CoPilot® Live mobile GPS navigation solutions are available in Europe, North America and Australia as retail-branded products and as the basis for leading OEM navigation systems, while the Company's PC*MILER® routing, mapping and fleet management solutions are used by over 21,000 transportation, logistics and manufacturing companies worldwide. Partners include Motorola, T-Mobile, Scania, NAVTEQ�, Ford, BMW, TBS and the U.S. Department of Defense." ALK received the 2005 Microsoft Partner of the Year award for Mobility Solutions Sales and Marketing, and is the official navigation sponsor to the Gumball Rally. CoPilot Live FleetCenter was the Grand Final Winner of the Global LBS Challenge 2006
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For more details, visit www.alk.com or alk.eu.com |
