Intermec Technologies Corp. of Everrett, WA has upgraded its Interstate Battery System of America fleet to give Intertstate’s route trucks more onboard computing power.
Interstate Battery System, which has more than 200,000 retail customers, has chosen to upgrade its 1,200 route sales managers’ Intermec 4500 DOS handheld computers to Intermec 6110 mobile computers that use the Microsoft Windows OS. The computers run Interstate Batteries’ mobile software co-designed by Intermec partner Mobile Tech Solutions Inc. and Interstate Batteries.
The rugged Intermec 6110 mobile pen computer is equipped with a 100 MHz AMD processor and 32 megabytes of memory – a key factor in managing route sales operations, said Intermec. Although the older units still performed, it was the lack of sufficient memory that led Interstate to upgrade its equipment, it said.
With both daily and overnight routes, route sales managers needed a lot of account information. Those using a unit with only one megabyte of memory would generally have to return to the office once a day to upload information from their handheld computers to ensure they would be able to continue servicing the rest of their customers. Those with overnight routes primarily used units with four megabyte of memory, which still allowed them to view only a portion of the records they have available today, said Intermec.
Interstate route sales managers now can not only track traditional information such as truck inventory and customer transactions, but they also can store and track customer history, generate reports and reconcile sales dollars and inventory while in the field, said Intermec.
