Vehicle routing vendor Routific and Virtace, a software vendor serving field service companies, have formed a strategic partnership.

The integration with Routific introduces logic that solves the notorious travelling salesman problem — also known as the vehicle routing problem when applied to fleets. Users can now optimize schedules from within Virtace's inField Clipboard platform, enabling field workers to be more efficient with their time and resources on the road, according to the companies.

"It is our mission to simplify field operations while optimizing performance and profitability for our clients," said Rakesh Tiku, president and co-founder of Virtace. "We are always looking to evolve inField Clipboard to offer the newest, most innovative solutions and partnering with Routific, one of the experts in routing, will bring considerable value to our clients."

The partnership comes at a time when many software companies are increasingly leveraging APIs and existing expertise instead of trying to build everything in-house. Both Routific and Virtace have already integrated with several solution partners.

"Routific integrates easily, and it works extremely quickly," Tiku said. "The optimized routes appeared instantly like the solution is one application — and that's exactly how a well-developed API should perform."

"We're very excited to have our proprietary routing engine integrated with inField Clipboard," said Routific's founder and CEO Marc Kuo. "Route optimization is essential to field services, and Virtace is one of the leaders in field services management software."