Someone emailed me and said that Microsoft MapPoint? has this functionality for around $300.
What is it?
A consumer/small business priced delivery route plotting application which takes a set of map points and plots them on a map giving the best route between each point. The application would also optimize the list of points to take the least amount of time to complete the route.
What good is it?
The idea for the application came from flowery shop delivery routes. In the past flowershops would have pin boards where they would take points and plot the point where each flower delivery needed to go. The person delivering the flowers would use their best judgement on which delivery to do when to maximize the time.
Currently, there are software applications that automate this process but they are proprietary and cost something on the order of $3,000. Other software applications will plot all the points on the map for you but they do not optimize the route needed to complete all the deliveries in the shortest amount of time.
Why is cost important?
Small businesses or consumers usually can not afford to pay $3,000 for route plotting and optimization software that may or may not work very well.
Something along the lines of between $99 and $499 would be a reasonable amount to pay for route plotting and optimization software (plus maps of US and Canada).
