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PALM IN THE REAL WORLD
LinCo Services drives efficiencies with handheld route delivery application
By Christine Harland Williams
Route delivery, traditionally a low-tech enterprise, is in a time of transition thanks to new Palm OS handheld applications that are improving efficiency and providing route drivers unprecedented access to customer information. LinCo Services (at http://www.lincoservices.com) recently migrated its route delivery business away from paper-intensive processes by deploying the MiniMate handheld solution (at http://www.prismvs.com/index2.htm) for route delivery on wireless Palm handhelds, shown in use in Figure A.
FIGURE A
 
LinCo Services has deployed the MiniMate handheld solution. Roll over picture for a larger image.
In addition to the many cost savings the handheld solution has generated, the use of handhelds has helped LinCo Services provide a superior level of customer service that is setting the company apart from its competition.
Background
Indiana-based LinCo Services, Inc. was established in 1978 as a coffee services distributor. Today, LinCo distributes over 41,000 items to over 3,200 customers at offices, convenience stores, and institutional customers such as restaurants, hospitals, and nursing homes in Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky. The 36-person company achieved $10.5 million in sales in 2001.
"Our diverse product line made us an excellent place to put a handheld route delivery application to the test," said Greg Linneweber, vice president of operations at LinCo Services. "We deliver traditional coffee service items such as coffee and teas, cups, cream and sugars, as well as less traditional items like Coca Cola syrup, salad dressings, portion packed items, cleaning supplies, paper items, and a full line of office products and furniture."
Buried in paperwork
With so many customers and such a diverse product line, LinCo Services was buried in paperwork. LinCo's ten route drivers generated an average of 20,000 paper invoices each month. The company tried to alleviate the problem by implementing a desktop routing and scheduling software called Visual BeverageMate (developed by Prism Visual Software). The software integrated LinCo's operational software with its Visual AccountMate accounting software to help manage its routes and streamline operations. But even with this software, it took LinCo staff up to one hour per day to print and manually create each delivery route.
Once the routes were created and printed, drivers made deliveries, leaving paper tickets with customers and returning to the office with tickets full of hand-written changes and payment information. These notes had to be manually entered into the accounting system. What's more, Illinois has a complex sales tax system where each city can have its own rate. This created plenty of room for errors on invoice calculations performed manually by route drivers. LinCo usually processed and sent out three or four corrected invoices per day with this paper-based system.
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