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Routing Around, Controlling the Flow, Setting Up Shop

Three CEOs each review a different software package.

New software packages help you navigate a trip, manipulate your data, and initiate a business. Our CEO reviewers take their measure

REVIEWS
The man who inspects our company's postage meter made his annual visit to our office recently. He told me he'd spent the morning looking up addresses at the post office, which gen- erously let him use its route maps to locate the businesses and map out directions before he started his rounds.

How many other businesspeople spend a significant amount of time locating their next stops and planning their travel? If you stop at service stations to ask for directions, Metro Navigator (on two CD-ROMs) can free up your time and make your in-city travel much easier.

You begin by entering your starting and ending locations. The software then calculates your route. It prints out detailed turn-by-turn travel directions and displays and prints a customized map. If you've ever rented a car from a major car-rental agency and used its computerized driving instructions, you've seen what this kind of program can do; it uses the same data the agency systems use.

On a recent trip to Washington, D.C., I used Metro Navigator to plan my route to several meetings. I entered the location of my hotel at 999 9th Street NW and the location of my appointment. While the program calculated the route, it asked me trivia questions about the city to pass the time. (The processing took less than a minute; the trivia-question feature can be turned off.) The following, in an easy-to-read format, was then displayed on my screen:

From: 999 9th St. NW, Washington D.C.

To: 1730 Rhode Island Ave. NE, Washington D.C.: about 3.6 miles, 11 minutes.

Directions:

(1) 0.0 Start out going south on 9th St. NW towards New York Ave. NW. Drive a short distance. Turn left onto K St. NW. Drive 0.1 miles. K St. NW becomes Massachusetts Ave. NW. Drive 0.1 miles.

0.3 Turn left onto 6th St. NW. Drive 0.8 miles.

(2) 1.1 Turn right onto Rhode Island Ave. NW. Drive 2.4 miles.

(3) 3.5 Make a U-turn at 18th St. NE. Drive 0.1 miles to your destination at 1730 Rhode Island Ave. NE.

If you input the hour of day you're traveling, the program calculates your travel time based on typical traffic patterns. It has an overlay mode that allows you to display restaurants, hotels, and even automated teller machines along your route. And the program includes information from the popular Frommer's City Guide Series (Prentice-Hall), with details and pricing on some hotels and restaurants.

There are two drawbacks. First, you can use Metro Navigator for only eight locations: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Orlando, San Francisco, and Washington-Baltimore. Second, although the route suggested is always the shortest distance between start and finish, the shortest distance between two points isn't always the fastest route when you factor in traffic. But the routes got me where I was going without adding nearly as much time as if I'd been lost.

SOFTWARE

Metro Navigator, from Philips Media, Los Angeles (800-883-3767; $39), a program that provides city maps and directions for getting from point A to point B

REVIEWER

Jordan E. Ayan, president of Create-It!, a technology-consulting firm based in Naperville, IL

REQUIREMENTS

486 or higher PC-compatible with Windows 3.1 or Windows 95, 16 MB RAM, 640x 480 display at 256 colors, 2X or faster CD-ROM drive, at least 7 MB free hard-drive space

If you want to grow your business beyond the small-business classification, you have to control your vital data. Information about customers, products, and vendors all need effective management.

With today's new breed of relational databases, controlling data is easier than ever. Not only do those databases let you store data all in one place; they also make it easier to manipulate data, to create usable formats. And with properly designed reports, you can very quickly detect changes in product sales, consumer purchases, or supplier efficiency.

One of the new relational databases is Salsa, whose claim to fame is that it's easier to customize than any other relational database. And in fact, Salsa does make it easy to design forms and reports about customers, custom mailings, management applications, and sales. Salsa also is particularly good at creating a catalog of products, by integrating information alongside photographs.

But though Salsa wins in customization, it falls short on other important features. For example, for its price Salsa doesn't go far enough nor is it as easy to use as its marketing claims.

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