Microsoft Virtual Earth
Customer Solution Case Study
FedEx Improves Customer Experience with
Integrated Mapping and Location Data
Overview
Country or Region: United States
Industry:
Transportation and logistics—Materials
handling
Customer Profile
Headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee,
FedEx has 1,800 U.S. stores to provide
customers with supply chain,
transportation, business, and related
information services. FY07 revenues were
U.S.$35 billion.
Business Situation
FedEx wanted to offer a store locater with
more features and location information, to
help customers find the nearest location
for the particular services they needed—
when they needed them.
Solution
FedEx used Microsoft® Virtual Earth™
mapping technology to provide dynamic
mapping capabilities that help customers
find locations faster and with more refined
information.
Benefits
 Proof of concept in three weeks
 Location help calls eliminated
 Better customer experience
 Future-proof technology

“With Virtual Earth, rather than clicking 10 times to
find information, customers get it right away with the
compass control.”
Narayanan Kasiarunachalam, Technical Advisor, FedEx
In 2007, FedEx, a leading shipping and printing services
corporation, wanted to develop a more innovative online store
locator to improve customer experience. Its existing application
delivered static maps of routes to its locations but did not return
information such as location type, available services, or business
hours. FedEx chose Microsoft® Virtual Earth™ mapping technology
to provide customers with location information and dynamic,
flexible views of routes to the nearest locations, overlaid with
driving directions. The FedEx development team built a solution
proof of concept in just three weeks, and deployed the new locator
in six months. Customer response has been enthusiastic, and calls
to the support center about finding locations have dropped
significantly.
“We love the Virtual
Earth SDK. It shows a
demo and its source
code, and if you really
want to know more
details of how a feature
got implemented, you
can go to the reference
section—it’s all right
there.”
Narayanan Kasiarunachalam, Technical
Advisor, FedEx
Situation
The modern air/ground express industry was
pioneered with the founding of Federal
Express in 1971; the corporation was created
in 1998 as FDX Corporation and became
FedEx Corporation in January 2000. Today,
FedEx is a worldwide network of companies
that includes FedEx Express, FedEx Ground,
FedEx Freight, FedEx Services, and FedEx
Kinko’s. FedEx shipping, information, and
supply chain services are available at 1,800
stores in the United States, and FY07
revenues were U.S.$35.2 billion.
FedEx has many competitors, with 97 percent
of the market share for shipping taken by
United Parcel Service, the United States
Postal Service, and DHL. There are also
30,000 independent printers in the United
States alone, with FedEx Kinko’s taking 10
percent of that market share. Thus, the
corporation is always looking for innovative
ways both to provide information and
services more easily and quickly to its
customers, and provide an outstanding
customer experience.
Limited Online Location Information for
Customers
For its online store locator, FedEx used the
Microsoft® MapPoint® Web service to provide
static, two-dimensional maps, with driving
directions in a separate window. FedEx
wanted to improve access to its locations
with a richer, more valuable online
experience for customers, who fall into two
main categories: local users who want to
have a package delivered overnight, and
business travelers who want to send
packages back to their home offices.
However, the locator application returned
only whatever location was the closest to the
user—it did not provide information on the
available service offerings, location type, or
business hours. This information was
important because of the variety of choices:
staffed locations with shipping services,
FedEx Kinko’s locations with both shipping
and printing services, unstaffed shipping drop
boxes, and authorized shipping centers with a
range of additional, non-FedEx services. Most
FedEx-staffed locations and FedEx Kinko’s
locations offer Saturday delivery or Saturday
drop-off capabilities; many are open 24
hours, but some are only open for 14 hours.
Customers could not tell whether a location
returned by the application was an unstaffed
drop box, had printing services, or was going
to be open when they needed it.
Search for a Richer Customer Experience and
a Future-Proof Solution
Improving the locator fell under the FedEx
commitment to Web 2.0, or “next generation”
strategy, for innovation and improved
customer experience. Web 2.0 is the use and
expansion of World Wide Web technology and
the design of Web-based communities and
hosted services, such as social-networking
sites, wikis, and blogs, to facilitate
information-sharing and collaboration among
users. David Zanka, Senior Vice President of
E-Commerce Technology at FedEx Services,
says, “At FedEx, we see a trend of
‘destination to connection,’ meaning
customers want to directly connect to FedEx
services and solutions rather than having to
rely solely on going to fedex.com to conduct
business. To respond to this trend, we’re
interfacing more of our applications with our
customers, such as our store locator and our
internal and external shipping and tracking
applications. As part of our next generation
strategy, we wanted to use more rich Internet
applications, to visually represent our
location data to users.” FedEx wanted a
technology that would support its need for
innovation into the future, with business
intelligence integration capabilities for use
inside and outside the firewall, platform
stability, round-the-clock technical
assistance, high application availability, and
strong development support.
“Customers enjoy being
able to see what the
locations look like
before they visit them—
and they know that
they’re going straight to
the right location to get
their tasks done.”
Miles Hoelzel, Business Application Advisor,
FedEx
Solution
The FedEx development team researched the
available products and visited internal and
external blogs and forums to get
recommendations and feedback. It
considered a host of other technologies
before choosing Microsoft Virtual Earth™, an
integrated set of Web-based services that
developers can use to provide unique views
of data and to develop dynamic online
experiences through interactive maps and
rich geospatial imagery.
A Flexible and Well-Supported Solution
One deciding factor was that, because Virtual
Earth is not an Internet-only Web service, the
team could use the new solution both inside
and outside its firewall. Virtual Earth operates
across the Internet or a corporate intranet,
and developers have the flexibility to use
Virtual Earth Map Control, which lets users
make requests through JavaScript to an
Asynchronous Java and XML (AJAX) map
object from virtually any device capable of
receiving Web data. FedEx can use the Virtual
Earth application programming interfaces
(APIs) to easily integrate with its existing
business data and interoperate with its
information systems.
Virtual Earth also has good development
support. Resources for Virtual Earth include a
gallery of applications, tools, community
resources, technical articles, and an online
interactive software development kit (SDK),
which the development team used to build a
proof of concept in three weeks. Narayanan
Kasiarunachalam, Technical Advisor at
FedEx, says, “We love the Virtual Earth SDK.
It shows a demo and its source code, and if
you really want to know more details of how a
feature got implemented, you can go to the
reference section—it’s all right there.
“As a Web technology, Virtual Earth was the
appropriate choice. It has advanced features
and 24/7 support, and we can use its Web
services to integrate location-based services
such as maps, driving directions, and
proximity searches into our new software
applications and business processes.”
FedEx also got direct business-value and
product support from the Microsoft Virtual
Earth product teams, who also coordinated
with InFusion Development, FedEx’s
technology partner for the solution.
The Solution Proof of Concept
Although FedEx already had a relationship
with Microsoft that included an enterprise
support contract, the development team still
had to submit the new solution to FedEx
Enterprise Architectural Design Services,
which heads the review committee that
approves new technologies.
“The proof of concept is what convinced
everyone to go with Virtual Earth,” Miles
Hoelzel, Business Application Advisor, FedEx,
recalls “It was warmly received by the
committee, because it allowed them to really
see how the eventual application would look,
and how versatile the technology is.”
Rich, Useful Information for Customers
With Virtual Earth, FedEx can integrate data
from nearly any source and layer it onto aerial
photos or maps (terrain or street) to put data
in the visual context of location for
customers. Sources include databases and
Global Positioning System (GPS) locators;
FedEx uses its Oracle database to store all its
location data. FedEx can also use Java
enterprise languages to pre-render map tiles
(photo images) and retrieve locations in real
time; this way, users can smoothly drag
maps, change map views, and zoom in and
out without any significant server delay or
page refreshes. Customers can also use the
new solution to filter out locations in their
searches based on different criteria, instead
of just getting results based on proximity.
The new locater application offers customers
the choice of a map, photo, or hybrid view of
a route to a FedEx location. In hybrid view,
driving directions and map elements such as
street names are superimposed over a photo
or map view, instead of being displayed in a
separate window. With Virtual Earth, users
can zoom in or out, tilt the viewing angle, and
get three-dimensional photo views of major
cities and landmarks. The driving directions
are integrated with the map: users can see a
pop-up bubble that displays every step of the
driving directions text along the route.
Hoelzel notes, “In the past, our locator
compass was always set to the north
regardless of what direction you were going to
approach a location from; if you came from
the south, that was great, but if you came
from another direction, the application
couldn’t show you that view.” These versatile
features make it easier for traveling
customers to quickly orient themselves while
visiting a new city; both they and local users
can benefit from the step-by-step driving
directions.
Evolution and Deployment of the Solution
The team built the proof of concept in July
2007, and first deployed the new solution for
the FedEx locator in September 2007, using
Virtual Earth to add basic features such as
data sets, routes to FedEx locations, and
pushpins (pushpins are information bubbles
that pop up from locations on a map or photo
view). In January 2008, it merged both the
FedEx locator and the FedEx Kinko’s locator
databases and mapping data sets, so that
customers could find both types of locations
from a single application. Virtual Earth 6.0
provides maps with street-level detail for 67
countries or regions in 13 languages, plus the
associated international support for
languages, imagery, and currency.
Benefits
FedEx is using the new locator to innovate
and differentiate, by offering a richer and
more useful online customer experience with
strong Microsoft support. The ease of
development saved the company time-tomarket, with the proof of concept taking only
three weeks to build. The technology’s
integration abilities will make it easy for
FedEx to develop future applications by
incorporating imagery, mapping, and
business information from multiple sources.
Strong Microsoft Support
FedEx found the Microsoft product teams
easy to work with. Karen Miller, Director of
Development at FedEx, says, “Microsoft is
very responsive. It incorporated our feedback
into Virtual Earth and worked directly with our
technology partner to support our solution.”
Improved Customer Online Experience
After the deployment of the new solution,
calls about finding store locations have
dropped almost to zero, in large part because
the locater is so easy to use. “With Virtual
Earth, rather than clicking 10 times to find
information, customers get it right away with
the compass control,” Kasiarunachalam
reports.
Feedback from customers indicates that the
new locator gives FedEx a competitive edge;
they are enthusiastic about being able to
select locations based on service hours and
offerings, such as which stores have signcreation and graphics capabilities. Hoelzel
adds, “The impact of the Virtual Earth project
has been extremely positive. Customers enjoy
being able to see what the locations look like
before they visit them—and they know that
they’re going straight to the right location to
get their tasks done.”
The new locater has added appeal to the
FedEx site. “At FedEx we absolutely believe
that technology is a major driver of value and
a differentiator of the marketplace, so we
embrace new technologies such as Virtual
Earth,” Zanka says. “I took a Virtual Earth
tour of Washington, D.C.—to look at the
nation’s capital and zip down the Mall, past
the Smithsonian, and when I saw the
Washington Monument in 3-D, I thought,
‘Wow, that’s cool!’”
Time-Saving, Future-Proof Technology
The ability to integrate Virtual Earth with
nearly any data source saves FedEx
development time, as did the online SDK.
Hoelzel says, “The SDK is very user-friendly.
There is a lot of information on the Web site
about how to employ it in various
applications, and our team was able to
implement it in our locater seamlessly. The
current implementation of Virtual Earth has
exceeded our expectations from a
development perspective.”
Hoelzel appreciates the ease of developing
solutions with Virtual Earth and Java
Enterprise languages. “In that regard, Virtual
Earth helps us develop more versatile,
robust, and scalable applications, for
enhanced reliability. It will continue to evolve,
mature, and grow toward improving our ability
to integrate it with other capabilities on our
Web site.”
Future Plans
Ease of integration also provides unlimited
opportunities for customization and
personalization. After the development team
implemented the new locator on fedex.com,
other teams have approached them about
using the technology platform for other
internally facing applications and for
expanding the customer-facing site.
Possible future uses include GeoFencing,
which would involve putting a predetermined
radius around an address (called a fence)
with GPS that would automatically be
triggered as a FedEx delivery truck crosses
the fence. This opens the possibility for FedEx
to engage its customers while their
shipments are in transit, such as with delivery
alerts, in near real time. Hoelzel says, “In the
future we hope to be able to overlay
customer data on Virtual Earth so that
customers can see which locations they’re
shipping the most to in a geographical area.”
For More Information
Microsoft Virtual Earth
For more information about Microsoft
products and services, call the Microsoft
Sales Information Center at (800) 4269400. In Canada, call the Microsoft
Canada Information Centre at (877) 5682495. Customers who are deaf or hard-ofhearing can reach Microsoft text telephone
(TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in
the United States or (905) 568-9641 in
Canada. Outside the 50 United States and
Canada, please contact your local
Microsoft subsidiary. To access information
using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com
The Microsoft Virtual Earth platform is an
integrated set of services providing quality
geospatial data, rich imagery, cutting edge
technology, and dependable performance
that helps organizations visualize data and
provide immersive end-user experiences.
With ongoing investments in innovation
driven by customer feedback, the Virtual
Earth platform continues to offer new map
detail and imagery, feature enhancements,
and robust platform capabilities.
For more information, visit
www.microsoft.com/virtualearth
For more information about FedEx products
and services, call (800) 463–3339 or visit
the Web site at:
www.fedex.com
Software and Services

This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published October 2008
Technologies
− Microsoft Virtual Earth

Services
- Microsoft MapPoint Web Service