Roadmap monthly newsletter - April 2011

April
2011

Roadmap monthly newsletter In this issue

New features
Editorial New importable cost file,

S
ome businesses use vehicles as their primary extended visualization,
source of activity. For instance, distribution and and more
long-haulage companies sell the transportation of
Case study
goods. Vehicles are, therefore, their central tool.
These are vehicle-centric businesses. TNT Express (Cyprus)

These businesses usually deal with fleet management in a News and events
very professional and systematic way. In most cases, the Project Citymotion
expertise to deal with all fleet management issues exists in- shows results
house.
This and much more…
Other businesses, however, such as a restaurant, a
gardening company or a bank, see their fleets not as their
central tool, but rather as a need to an end. They need
vehicles to take their goods or services to their customers.

Quite often, these companies do not have the internal expertise, time or
inclination to ensure the professional management of their fleets.

Therefore, fleet management often becomes a burden and is dealt with in a
minimalist form.

Having both sorts of businesses in mind, Frotcom was
designed in such a way that it is powerful enough to
serve professional fleet managers; but it also user-
friendly in order to be used by non-vehicle-centric
businesses.

This has been Frotcom’s philosophy since the very start. The proof is that we are
proud to count as customers, transportation companies with more than one
thousand trucks and trailers, but also companies with only one van.

Rather than having customers adapting to Frotcom, we built Frotcom to adapt
to customers.
Valério Marques
CEO - Frotcom International

A note from the editor – If you would like to have your own say in the next edition of this newsletter please do
not hesitate to get in touch at roadmap@frotcom.com.
Roadmap Monthly Newsletter | roadmap@frotcom.com | Tel + 351 214 135 670 | Fax +351 214 135 678
Frotcom vehicle tracking system | www.frotcom.com

Angola |Belgium | Brazil | Bulgaria | Cameroon | Cyprus | D. R. Congo | Greece | Kenya | Luxemburg | Macedonia | Madagascar | Mauritius |
Morocco | Portugal | Reunion Islands | Romania | Rwanda | Senegal | Serbia | Seychelles | Sierra Leone | Slovenia | Spain | Tanzania | Uganda

1

Did you know?

New Features Polluting less
New cost file type importable to Frotcom
Petrolina is a Cypriot oil company. By request of
Frotcom Cyprus, Frotcom can now import Petrolina’s
cost files. By doing this, all the fuel costs reported in
Petrolina’s cost file made available to the client are
immediately inserted in Frotcom’s cost management
module, in the corresponding vehicles.

Please contact your Frotcom Certified Partner for a complete list of the available cost
file types importable, or to request a new cost file type to be added.
Some interesting indicators were
Extended visualization period released by the European
Automobile Manufacturers
It is now possible to visualize an entire
Association, ACEA (www.acea.be),
week (7 days) of data, in the Vehicles tab.
concerning the european
This includes subfolders Map, Graph,
automobile industry:
Trips, Events and Details.

This feature had been required by clients - The most advanced trucks now
in the trucking business, to be able to emit 86% less NOx and 95% less
more easily see the entire routes in case particulate matter than those
of international trips. from the early 1990s.

An interesting secondary effect, which - Over the past 10 years, truck
resulted from the R&D work performed to exhaust emissions have reduced
deliver the new feature, was that Frotcom by 35% despite an increase in
now shows the standard 24 hours period ’work done’ (tonnekm) by 30%.
much quicker than before.
- In fact, it takes 100 cars today to
Additional columns in the Daily Summary table emit as many polluting elements
as 1 car in the 1970s! Noise levels
By users request, the table in Fleet > Daily summary now has three additional
of vehicles have been reduced by
columns, representing the time when the last trip was finished, the number of
90% over the same period.
different drivers who used the vehicle today and the name of the last driver to
use the vehicle. - Particulate matter filters can
reduce particulate emissions from
diesel vehicles by 99%.

Roadmap Monthly Newsletter | roadmap@frotcom.com | Tel + 351 214 135 670 | Fax +351 214 135 678 Source: www.acea.be


2

Tip of the month

Display stop duration on map
Case Study
TNT Express (Cyprus) Frotcom allows you to select which
Express delivery services in Cyprus labels to show on the map, under
the corresponding vehicle icons.
The presence of TNT express in Cyprus is
already dated from 1985. Later, in May 2007, You can select, among several
TNT Express (Cyprus) Ltd was established and different labels, the stop duration of
became part of the worldwide system of TNT a vehicle. This label displays, in the
Express. It is a fully owned subsidiary of TNT Fleet > Map view, for stopped
Group. In just this short period of time TNT vehicles, for how long they have
Cyprus managed to become one of the been stopped.
leading express distributors in Cyprus.

The company is proud of its high standards of customer service which is based
on its philosophy of putting the customer at the center of the business, and
acting as a business partner to devise professional solutions for their distribution
needs.

To select the labels to be shown, go
to Administration > My profile >
Map options and press Edit. Then
choose the appropriate
combination. You can pick up to 2
different labels. By default, “License
plate” and “Stop duration” are
The company transports daily the consignments of its customers using privately-
selected.
owned planes for international transportation and 28 vehicles inside
Cyprus. TNT Express Cyprus LTD employees 70 people at 3 depots located It is also possible to select the labels
at Nicosia, Limassol and Larnaca, while maintaining a fully organized network of directly by clicking the Map options
representatives all over Cyprus. button to the right of the map.

In addition, the infobox that shows
According to Philio Michael, HR Administrator of TNT Express (Cyprus) LTD,
when the mouse is over the last
“Frotcom is fully in line with our needs to have a total control of our fleet and has
position of a stopped vehicle, in
helped us in our effort to minimize our fleet’s emissions, too.”
Vehicles > Map, will now also
display the stop time, i.e. for how
ROADMAP congratulates Michalis and Frotcom Cyprus team for this successful
long the vehicle has been stopped
project.
there:



3

Joining Us
Next, on Roadmap
Gonçalo Oliveira
Frotcom International is proud to announce that
Gonçalo Oliveira has joined our R&D team, as Senior News and events,
Software Developer.
more new Frotcom features
Gonçalo’s admission is already helping Frotcom International’s response to all
the requests from the market, in the area of software, at the same time creating and tips will be presented.
room for a deeper and more agile R&D.

Aged 31, Gonçalo is a highly experienced professional, with more than 10 years
involvement in software projects. He holds a BSc from Kingston University in This and more, so don’t miss
London.
the next issue of Roadmap.
ROADMAP welcomes Gonçalo and wishes him lots of success.

News and events
Project Citymotion shows results
In September 2010 ROADMAP informed about
Frotcom International’s participation in the
Citymotion project. You may remember the
image to your right, or the full video you can find
at http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/2010/05/16/the-new-cartographers-1-pedro-m-cruz/.

Project Citymotion, developed in the framework of MIT Portugal, uses several
traffic data sources, including anonymous tracking data and anonymous GSM
data, and then applies data fusion methods to determine interesting
information about mobility; in this early stage, in the area of Lisbon.

Some interesting results were now displayed in a conference held in Lisbon. A
traffic prediction system based on previous traffic, estimates how the traffic will
be in the course of a certain day or week. It will also estimate the time of arrival
according to start and end place and hour of the day/day of the week.

Several other studies were conducted, including a study on taxi occupancy,
typical taxi trip origin and destinations according to hour of day. Also, it was
possible to establish, for a given sports event, from which neighborhoods came.
This mechanism is important in order to predict the congestion of streets and
roads when certain special events occur, such as a sports or musical event.

Project Citymotion will now give way to a new stage where a mobility platform
will be built, making it possible to collect anonymous mobility data and then to
generate public and private services based on data fusion methods.


4

Roadmap monthly newsletter - April 2011

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Roadmap monthly newsletter - April 2011