DeLorme, Inc. has announced
the release of XMap Business, a new mapping program on CD-ROM and DVD-ROM
that will help businesses locate customers, plan delivery routes, generate
mailing lists, and more. According to the company, XMap Business is a powerful,
affordable program designed specifically for businesses that don’t want
to spend thousands of dollars on complex Geographic Information System
(GIS) solutions, but that do want to visually and efficiently manage their
organizations within a geographic context. The program combines detailed,
street-level maps with database-management tools, easy-to-use annotation
functions, and over 104 million business and residential telephone listings.
“XMap Business is the answer for our longtime customers who have called
on us to create mapping and data tools to assist them in their business
activities,” said CEO David DeLorme. “For a cost of just $99.95 for the
entire U.S., they can not only see their current and potential business
geographically, but they can mark out territories, create targeted mailing
lists from the program’s built-in database, plan business travel, and even
make maps to post on their Web sites.”
According to the company, XMap Business enables businesspeople to do
the following:
Import data from programs such as Symantec ACT!, Goldmine, Microsoft Access,
Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Visual FoxPro, and other popular programs in
order to display that information on detailed maps of the entire U.S.
Access over 104 million business and residential telephone listings in
order to show locations of clients, customers, competitors, and business
prospects
Annotate the maps with text, MapNotes, and custom symbols
Create routes and directions between multiple addresses
Use Map Folio to save map views and to draw layers, routes, and datasets
for later use
Display map images on business, institutional, or personal Web sites
Professionals such as real estate brokers can create customized maps of
neighborhoods with driving routes and directions between property listings.
They can print out maps of those directions that include the locations
of schools, grocery stores, and other landmarks of importance to buyers.
A marketing director in charge of a chain of clothing stores can mark each
store on the map, and, during a radio advertising campaign, can illustrate
which outlets generated the highest sales, helping him or her gauge the
effectiveness of that campaign for each market.
As with DeLorme’s consumer-mapping programs, Street Atlas USA and Topo
USA 2.0, XMap Business lets people move around maps of the U.S. and zoom
in and out of multiple levels of map detail. They can also avoid getting
lost by loading the program on a laptop computer and connecting to a GPS
receiver, such as the DeLorme Earthmate GPS Receiver.
Owners of hand-held computers can download a component through the NetLink
tab that enables them to export map views to either a Palm Computing or
Windows CE hand-held computer. By purchasing DeLorme’s Solus Pro application
through the company’s Web site, multiple maps and routes can be created
in XMap Business, transferred to a hand-held, and then used in conjunction
with a GPS receiver.
XMap Business runs on Windows 95/98 or Windows NT 4.0 or later, requires
a personal computer with an Intel Pentium 120 MHz or higher processor,
32 MB of RAM, and 130 MB of available hard-disk space.