NearestFinda in action with a basic client application. You can write your own client using the sample code provided.

NearestFinda

"Find my Nearest" by road distance and driving time

New for 2008 - NearestFinda is a webservice that allows users to find the nearest item from a list, to a location they enter. It is a completely flexible application and can work with raw co-ordinates or with geo-referenced data, such as postcodes or place names, from anywhere in the world. The list items can range from retail outlets to railways stations, from taxi cabs to emergency crews on the move. Distances are calculated using road maps to provide more accurate results than straight lines.

• Features
  • Find the nearest point from a list to the location entered by the user.
  • Display the road distance and estimated driving time between the points.
  • Run on individual machines, or on a central server with clients on individual machines.
  • Distance calculations support multi-threading to allow multiple simultaneous enquiries.
  • Use the supplied webservice client or write your own using supplied source code and fit to your existing application.
  • Optionally connect the software directly to a database for the latest co-ordinates and details of the list (useful if status is continually changing - such as with shops offering limited supplies or emergency crews on the move).
  • Optionally update the list live from GPS data to provide the latest co-ordinates for each entry.


• Benefits
  • Ideal for customer service call centres, users just need to type in the customer's postcode or location to get an instant result.
  • Great for putting behind websites to provide a more accurate "Find My Nearest" function than just a straight line.
  • Incorporate into software to offer users a quick reference function.


• Case Study
  
  The software was initially developed for a car hire firm. They were looking for a solution to work in their international call centres that would allow the operator to enter a caller's postcode and for the software to return the nearest car hire location for them as well as the driving distance and time from the customer's current location.
  
  This offered operators the ability to provide information to the caller, without needing any geographic knowledge of their location. It also lets the operator give a real distance from the customer to the nearest location, without the problems that come with straight line distances (where customers have been directed on lengthy routes across estuaries which makes their road journey a lot longer).


• Data
  • Requires map data - this is supplied and pre-formatted by Graticule and can be dropped straight into the software.
  • UK Standard Edition includes full UK postcode file, plus Bartholomew road data.
  • Map data is available for all world countries, at different levels of detail - please contact the Graticule Sales Team to discuss more options.
  • Graticule can also format map data for which you already have a licence.


• Technical Information
  • Runs on a desktop machine with Windows XP/Vista or a Windows Server
  • Recommended 2.0 Ghz Processor and 512MB RAM
  • Requires less than 5MB of hard disk space for software, data requires extra (UK Standard Edition is 50Mb).


• Types of Licences
  • The software is licenced on an annual basis per server, based on the number of cores.
  • Map data is licenced on an annual basis per server or per user.
  • Licence fee includes 60 Days of free technical support.
  • For a quote, please contact us.


Not what you're looking for? We also offer these similar products


• Similar Products
  • PostcodeAnalyst 3 - for plotting postcodes to maps and analysing the results.
  • RoadDistanceFinda - for road based postcode distance calculations
  • Raw UK Postcode data - for use in your own applications.