Trucking Technology Report - Oct. 6
 |
Both the online report and e-mail are sponsored by @Track Communications, a supplier of wireless communications and dispatch services.
Today's Technology Headlines:
ul>
Wireless Joint Venture of BellSouth and SBC Named Cingular Wireless
BellSouth () and SBC Communications () have named their jointly developed wireless company Cingular Wireless. According to previously arranged terms, SBC has a 60% stake in the venture, while BellSouth owns the remaining 40%. Cingular Wireless has 19 million subscribers, ranking the company second among U.S. wireless carriers. The company has also earned roughly $12 billion in revenue.
wn, until the completion of the year. Wall Street Journal (10/06/00) P. A6
Strategy; Mobile Commerce; Everything Comes Down to Location
Location sensing and mobile commerce have become available to the general public through the global positioning system (GPS). This raises the question of transmitters allowing marketing companies to build a profile of data that could be sold to any restaurant or agency wanting it.Trucking companies use GPS to track fleets and delivery times. While the technology is useful in these ways, it becomes an issue for privacy advocates, who fear that location data will be abused by insurers or stalkers.
The privacy battle now focuses on guarding actual physical space, not anonymity in cyberspace. According to Ronjon Nag, chief executive of Cellmania, a wireless Web site company, location technology will be so convenient, consumers will sacrifice some privacy. General Motors' () OnStar unit protects privacy by not sharing customer data with other companies. Firms that want to market location services are thus trying to help protect their customers in order to gain approval. Computing (10/05/00) P. 42; France, Mike; Berman, Dennis
Happy Holidays for Shippers
Many online retailers, anxious to avoid the sort of delivery problems that beset so many of them during last year's holiday season, are now going to FedEx () and UPS () for help with back-end and supply-chain functions.
FedEx's Laurie Trucker says retailers that were focusing on Web development and customer relationship management have become more interested in logistics.
Jupiter Communications analyst Heather Doughtery says online retailers will mostly need outsourcing partners "just to handle order overflow" and to provide "a safety net." CRN (10/02/00) No. 914, P. 8; Jastrow, David; Cruz, Mike
Ford Extends E-Procurement Strategy
Ford Motor () is planning to build widespread e-procurement activities based on the Captura software that the automaker has been using to process travel expense reports for the past four months. Ford director of management systems Bipin Patel says that online procurement is a logical step from the company's current online capabilties. "We have a well-defined business-to-employee intranet, with an aim to provide as many self-service applications as possible," says Patel. The Captura Expense software, which is hosted for Ford by Exodus Communications, () is already in use among many U.S. Ford employees and is to be deployed across the enterprise in 2001. Captura and Ford have been working together to find ways to use the application for post-transactional processing other than expense reports; the efforts concentrate on the policy capabilities built into Captura Expense. General Motors () has also been using Captura software, hosted by Qwest () Cyber.Solutions. InternetWeek (10/02/00) No. 831, P. 10; Moozakis, Chuck
© copyright 2000 INFORMATION, INC. Terms of Service
| ||||
