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Pizza Pilot Integrates StrikeIron's Address Verification Service into Point of Sale Solution

A Slice of StrikeIron Web Services is the Perfect Ingredient to Improve Pizza Delivery Times up to 20%

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C.--StrikeIron Inc., provider of the Web Services Marketplace, today announced that Pizza Pilot is improving pizza delivery times with the help of StrikeIron's Address Verification Web Service. While cold pizza for breakfast may be the norm in college, the typical pizza business depends on getting the freshest, hottest pizza to the right address in the fastest possible time. And with gas prices rising daily, they can't afford to have employees lost on a delivery route or delayed getting back to deliver the next order.

Pizza Pilot is not only working to improve the quality of order-taking, but also getting the pizza in the hands of customers faster, enhancing customer satisfaction. "We focus on the entire process," says Bob Antonellis, founder and president of Pizza Pilot. "By monitoring hundreds of activities and ensuring delivery addresses are 100% accurate we can improve delivery times by as much as 12 minutes."

Pizza Pilot uses GPS to track every driver. It links to its Point of Sale (POS) to track all in-store activity, from order-taking to delivery to tracking drivers returning to the store. To get the best possible results, Pizza Pilot not only needed the most accurate GPS location tool, but the most up-to-date address validation technology. They use Microsoft's MapPoint to plot addresses, but often find they need to augment the address verification capabilities for the best results and to provide every customer with first class support. There's no room for relying on manually-entered address locations or an employee making an address input mistake.

The company also did not want the hassle and risk of updating and verifying the address reference database connecting to the GPS system on a monthly basis that most traditional address verification systems require. So, they looked for a solution that they could connect to once, and be integrated permanently.

Pizza Pilot chose StrikeIron's pioneering US Address Verification Web Service to ensure that order takers never take down a bad address and drivers never waste precious time tracking down delivery locations. The Web service inspects every element of an address to ensure its validity and, using sophisticated matching and data standardization technology, updates incorrect or incomplete address information prior to delivery.

The enhanced contact information is delivered live from StrikeIron via an XML-based Web service. Because the service is delivered over the Web utilizing XML-based standards, the address reference data never has to be re-imported, updated and reloaded. StrikeIron takes care of the updates at its central data center and feeds the data live over the Web--directly into Pizza Pilot's delivery management system.

During 16 months of in-store testing at several Dominos franchisees, Pizza Pilot was successful in improving driver productivity up to 20%, reducing labor, mileage theft and lost drivers while improving delivery times by 5-12 minutes.

"StrikeIron's Web Services allow Pizza Pilot to focus on improving their business processes," said Bob Brauer, president and CEO of StrikeIron. "In turn, pizza stores can focus on their business of making pizza, managing people, and servicing customers rather than IT infrastructure and maintaining data updates. It's a winning situation for all players."

About Pizza Pilot

Pizza Pilot is a software-based service that works with any POS and utilizes standard mobile GPS cell phones from Sprint/Nextel. Pizza Pilot's mapping software determines optimal dispatching and automatically assigns orders to drivers-allowing managers to focus on inside operations. For more information, visit www.pizzapilot.com.

About StrikeIron

StrikeIron is the leader in the commercialization of Web Services, providing the world's largest library of externally available plug-and-play Web services. Built on top of a sophisticated, yet easy-to-use Web Services Commerce Platform, the Marketplace serves as a place for providers and consumers of XML-based Web services to publish, subscribe to, and build applications and Web sites using a diverse set of Web services.

Enabling a business model for the Programmable Web, the core technology provides self-service publishing and consumption of Web services, micro-transactions and usage-based billing, software infrastructure, multiple productivity tools, seamless integration for both individual customers and software technology partners, and a consistency of usage from multiple Web services across multiple vendors. The Aurora Funds, Inc. and NC IDEA provided funding for StrikeIron after recognizing the significant opportunity to invest in a technology firm leading innovation of the Web 2.0. For more information, visit StrikeIron, Extending Your SOA.