HAND HELD PRODUCTS SIGNS FIVE YEAR MAINTENANCE CONTRACT WITH DPD

Hand Held Products, the world's leading supplier of image-based data capture systems, has signed a pan-European agreement with DPD (Deutscher Paket Dienst GmbH & Co KG), a subsidiary of La Poste and part of the GeoPost group. Under the new agreement, which runs until 2010, Hand Held Products will provide support and maintenance services on over 6,000 Dolphin(r) 9500 mobile computers.

The Dolphins are being used in DPD's depots and delivery trucks in Europe. The two companies had already signed a ?10 million agreement earlier this year, when DPD installed an automated delivery scan system based around the Dolphins.

DPD will have a single point of contact at Hand Held Products' base in Eindhoven. This will enable most problems to be resolved remotely by liaising with the 24x7 helpdesk. If this is not possible, the products will be returned to the Hand Held Products engineering lab or to one of the company's designated partners.

"By outsourcing the maintenance and support of the delivery scan system to Hand Held Products, we aim to increase its reliability even further," says Dr. Armin Bohnhoff, DPD's General Manager. "If any issues arise, the new agreement ensures that they will be resolved as quickly as possible. I believe that it will have a very positive impact on customer satisfaction levels."

Roel Vreeburg, Hand Held Products' Managing Director for EMEA, remarks: "This agreement results from our successful implementation of the delivery scan system earlier this year. We have shown DPD that implementing a solution is just the beginning, and after that we can really show our worth. This convinced DPD to award us the maintenance contract until 2010."