Three months ago, Steve Jobs received worldwide publicity for the announcement of Apple’s new iPhone. Less public, but probably equally impressive, however, is Donlen’s reveal of its new FleetWeb system. Just as Apple with iPhone, Donlen is creating an entirely new technology. The company has taken what previously could only be imagined, but limited by browser and operating system capability, and delivers a completely new and improved user experience.

The original FleetWeb system was introduced to the industry in 1997. According to Barry Steel, Donlen vice president of sales and marketing, the Web-based system pioneered many industry firsts. Donlen’s critical decision was not to further develop the current FleetWeb system, but to completely change the user experience.

The new FleetWeb, developed entirely in-house by the Donlen team, improves how data is entered, retrieved, and viewed.

“We believe our new system will increase user productivity by 100 percent, enhance the fleet team’s decision-making ability, and reduce costs,” said Gary Rappeport, CEO, Donlen Corp.

Rappeport and Steel demonstrated five inventive features that enable the company to make those claims.

• Multiple, Custom Screens Visible at Once
  “Imagine all of the daily tasks a fleet team must deliver. We’ve found they constantly ping-pong back and forth from menus to screens — especially the three of four screens they use all of the time. Our new system allows users to have those screens open — just where they want them — on their desktops at the same time. This one feature significantly increases productivity,” explained Rappeport.

  “The key is the ability to customize, not just at the customer level, but also at the user level. Each user has his or her own unique set of permissions that control interaction with FleetWeb.”

  
  

• Drag and Drop
  “Picture a fleet manager spec’ing a vehicle for a new sales rep; that new employee wants the same vehicle a co-worker selected six weeks prior. With our new system, the fleet team can drag and drop the year, make, model, and trim from the existing file to the new file without typing a key. In this one example, seven data fields will be populated in less than three seconds — and the fleet team never needed to touch a computer keyboard,” explained Steel.

  
  

• Visual Interface with Graphical Drill Downs
  “Visualize a map of the United States,” Rappeport said. “With this new system, the user can drill down to a specific geography (a specific state, for example), by simply clicking on that state. Once the user navigates to the geography it desires, it can create reports specific to that geography.”

  
  

• Account Locator
  “Here’s a common scenario — a driver is on a sales trip in Butte, Mont., and is in immediate need of service. Through the Donlen system, a fleet team located in Buffalo, N.Y., can identify the nearest national account service provider and provide turn-by-turn driving directions from the driver’s current location. Donlen also offers a fuel finder that includes the price of gasoline so the fleet team can identify the best pricing and provide directions to that specific station,” explained Steel.

  
  

• Auto Inform
  “Imagine a scenario where a fleet team needs to deliver a set of reports every month, yet the company CFO wants a different set on different days of the month, and regional sales managers want yet a third type of reports on even different timings. Through the new FleetWeb, the fleet team can preidentify the reports and schedule them to be automatically generated and automatically delivered to their client’s email box,” said Rappeport.

  In a day when fleet teams are under pressure to do more with less, it appears that Donlen’s new FleetWeb system enables them to be more productive than ever.

  “We believe this new system takes us light-years forward to enhance the experience for our users — productivity is increased, decision-making is improved, and costs are reduced. This is a perfect example of how inventive technology can empower great businesses,” concluded Rappeport.