Getting There Via Computer

Nation's Business, Oct, 1998 by Lynn Woods

Lynn Woods is a free-lance writer in Kingston, N.Y.

Mapping software enables firms to use computers for locating customers and speeding deliveries anywhere in the United States.

Michael and Susan Walker used to give their snack-food company's drivers handwritten directions for finding new customers' addresses. Not anymore. For over a year, the Walkers have used Street Atlas USA mapping software from DeLorme in Yarmouth, Maine, to print detailed maps that pinpoint the location of any new client.

The Walkers' company, SnackTime, supplies more than 1,200 banks, law offices, and other small firms in the South Deerfield, Mass., area with cardboard trays of 100 snack items, delivered once a week. With three trucks, each making 45 to 50 stops a day, it's essential that the drivers don't waste time trying to find an unfamiliar location.

Using the CD-ROM mapping software "is a timesaver and a frustration saver," says Michael Walker. "We also use Street Atlas maps to show salespeople where to find new accounts by highlighting the locations of industrial parks, retail outlets, and other sources of new customers on the maps.'

The Walkers are among the small-business owners who are saving time and money by using mapping software on their computers to locate customers and to quicken the pace of deliveries. High-magnification capability lets users look at any region in the United States in street-by street detail.

Moreover, printouts from the leading products not only show maps but also have places to log important client information. And the letter-size maps are easier to use than unwieldy conventional road maps.

With a connection to the Internet, users can check the software makers' World Wide Web sites for updates on such things as road construction and weather reports.

Mapping-software products typically retail for $40 to $50 and are easy to use. Three of the most popular packages are Street Atlas USA, Expedia Streets 98 from Microsoft Corp. in Redmond, Wash., and StreetFinder from Rand McNally in Skokie, Ill.

Each product lets you locate a business or residence on a map by typing in a street address or a ZIP code. You can zoom in and out on the map or pan over it in any compass direction by clicking the mouse.

Both DeLorme and Microsoft also offer software-available in deluxe versions of their mapping products or as add-ons-containing a nationwide directory of residential and business phone numbers. With these you can also locate addresses by typing in a phone number.

Following are descriptions of Street Atlas, Expedia Streets 98, and StreetFinder. All three include on-screen tutorials and are available in retail stores.

To use the products, you need a personal computer with a CD-ROM drive. To obtain updates via the Web, you need a modem and an Internet service provider. Once you own any of the products, you can buy yearly updates, usually at about half the price of the first version you purchased.

DeLorme's Street Atlas USA 5.0

Accuracy, ease of use, and competitive price-$45-make Street Atlas popular with small-business owners. The latest version offers detailed maps and address-finding capability plus routing that features printed directions and a highlighted map. You can customize a route by, for example, instructing the program not to use toll roads.

The colorful maps are easy to read and richly detailed, with different colors assigned to interstate highways, local highways, and smaller streets as well as to features such as parks, rivers, local landmarks, and even hiking and biking trails. There are 15 levels of magnification, as close in as one-tenth of a mile.

Street Atlas lists more than 2 million businesses and points of interest, which can be selected by category on a given route. To get information on any of them, the user simply places the cursor over the symbol and clicks the right mouse button, which causes a small text box to appear.

The menu of icons at the top of the screen is fairly easy to decipher. There are some quirks, however. For example, when a street address in Kingston, N.Y., was typed in, the program mistook the street number for a ZIP code, even when the typed address included a ZIP code.

Sometimes the program failed to locate a particular street address. Michael Walker says he solves this problem by typing in the name of a cross street.

Westchester County Airport, outside New York City, was not listed by name when the "find places" function was used. Instead, it was listed under White Plains. And the business listings are incomplete. At one location, gasoline stations on the main street were not indicated on the map, although a station on a side street was shown. A DeLorme spokesman says the company plans to improve the comprehensiveness of the listings in the 1999 edition.

Used in conjunction with DeLorme s Phone Search USA ($29), a nationwide directory of more than 98 million residential and business listings, Street Atlas enables users to look up phone listings and locate the accompanying address on a map.