FAQs about the portatour^® Route Planner

portatour^® can be used for centralized, decentralized and combined route planning. Decentralized planning means that the field reps plan their routes themselves using portatour^®. This is the most common way portatour^® is used, as – especially in field sales – it is particularly important to adjust when appointments change and flexibly satisfy client needs (more information in this article). Centralized planning is the case when back-office staff uses portatour^® to plan routes for the field rep team. A combined method is possible: back-office arranges appointments and creates an initial plan which is then adapted dynamically by the field reps who also use portatour^® to fill gaps with additional visits.

No; portatour^® Route Planner does not store GPS records of drives. portatour^® is not a de-motivational and legally questionable surveillance tool. Instead, portatour^® is a great help for field reps. Visiting more customers, driving fewer miles, and spending less spare time for planning is a big motivation for field reps.

Yes, if desired, portatour^® takes the current traffic situation into account when planning the route. For the next trip, priority is then given to those customers who can be reached on roads free of traffic jams. portatour^® uses historical speed data for the following trips in the schedule. The current real-time traffic situation is optionally displayed on the map in portatour^®. Read more in the article Live traffic route optimization for sales reps.

Yes – import your new customers into the CRM system of your choice and portatour^® will calculate optimized route plans to visit new customers in addition to your existing customers in a mileage-efficient manner.

In many cases, conventional providers only offer one or the other, so you then need two different applications and suppliers. This has major drawbacks: the sales team has to learn two different applications, and having to constantly transfer data between them is highly frustrating and inefficient.

With portatour^® Territory Optimization + Route Planner, you will experience a level of field sales efficiency you never thought possible. We combine the power of the best route-planning solution on the market with next-generation dynamic territory optimization.

portatour^® Route Planner is suitable for any size of business: From a one-person company to large corporations with 1,000+ field staff. Users come from many different industries: Pharmaceutical, medical, cosmetic, food, industrial and commercial needs, wholesale, collection agencies, toys, paper and stationery, merchandise, chemicals, paints and coatings, electronics, workshop supplies, craft supplies, car accessories, optics, drinks, food and beverage, tobacco, heating and sanitary, market research, mystery shopping, building services, sports and leisure goods, clothing and textiles, machinery, spare parts, materials, furniture and equipment, telecommunications, dental needs.

portatour^® is used for route planning in field sales with regular client calls, one-time visits as part of a product launch, pricing and inventory control in outlets, mystery shopping, new customer acquisition, recurring service activities. It creates an optimized route-plan for a travelling salesman with multiple stops.

portatour^® uses the most advanced security standards: The communication between the device and portatour^® servers is SSL encrypted; to gain access you need a username and password. The portatour^® servers are protected by firewalls; data is stored on encrypted disks on multiple database servers. The data centre has biometric access control and video surveillance . We do not share your data with third parties. More information on data security at portatour^®.

Yes – portatour^® is compliant with GDPR. You will find information on data protection in our Privacy Policy and in the Licence Terms. If you need an order processing contract in accordance with GDPR, please contact us.

portatour^® is an online-web-application with support for offline data storage. In situations without internet connection, your most important data is readily available offline in your browser. portatour^® is optimized for using a low bandwidth, as is typical for mobile use. Being a web-application, it removes the need for installation and updates on your mobile devices and leverages the computing power of the portatour^® server farm for route-optimization.

portatour^® is designed for high availability: Multiple redundant high performance servers with automatic load balancing and failsafes, 24/7-Monitoring with automatic alarm, redundant fiber connectivity to the Internet, redundant power supply, additionally UPS and diesel generator, redundant air conditioning and fire alarm system with smoke detection and extinguishing system.

If you already have a trial or a paid account, you can simple use the login button in the top right corner of this page. If you are an employee of an enterprise using portatour^®, you receive your access link from your administrator. Your access link works on PCs, smartphones, and tablets. If you do not have an account yet, you can sign up for a free trial here.

Would you like to present the sales route planning software portatour^® to your company? We are happy to prepare an online presentation for your management, sales management, IT management and key sales representatives, where we cater to your situation and answer individual questions. Contact us today.

portatour^® is the best route planning software for you, if you are visiting your customers on a regular basis and spending most of your week on the road. The article Is portatour^® the best route planner for me? provides a checklist on when to use portatour^® for route planning.

Yes. Sign up for a free trial of portatour^® Anywhere, a web-version without further requirements. The trial license will automatically expire after 30 days and is limited to one user. There are no costs. You can also try an integration with the CRM of your choice.

When receiving your account data you also get access to tutorial videos and PDF manuals in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. Within the application you will find online help. Additionally, our support team is happy to help you via email. Read more about help & support here. Optionally, we offer individual online setup workshops and user trainings for you and your team.

No – portatour^® is a “software as a service” application. You subscribe to portatour^® as a service and save yourself costs for server hardware, software, installation, maintenance and operation. portatour^® is ready from the first day, is constantly updated, works on any device with a web browser and uses the computing power of the portatour^® server farm. You can choose between quarterly and annual payments.
More information: Route-planning as Software-as-a-Service in the cloud or as self-hosted cost explosion?

You currently spend an average of 50€ per customer visit, all expenses considered. With portatour^®, one additional visit per day is possible, meaning 20 additional visits per month. This generates added value equivalent to 1000€ per field rep and per month.
In addition, following call suggestions proposed by portatour^® leads to more frequent visits to important A customers and thus higher turnover per customer. Customers with lower priority are visited less frequently, in accordance with the call interval - but are not forgotten!
Fine-tune this return-on-investment calculator to match your situation.

Yes, you can! Check out our RESTful JSON portatour^® ISV API.

Yes, portatour^® Route Planner works with Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 and 365, Siebel CRM, Sugar CRM and other CRM/ERP systems. More information here.