AS motorists try to figure out how much more ERP (electronic road pricing) charges they will have to pay from today, one enterprising Singaporean start-up company, PortalOne Pte Ltd, has compiled all the information, superimposed on interactive street maps, on its oneshift.com webpage.

Speaking to BizIT, PortalOne founder Evan Lee said that the company's database at the oneshift.com portal allows users to not only find out how to get to a specific destination but also provides other information like location of petrol kiosks, car showrooms, ERP gantries and more.

'Driving directions to your desired destinations are shown in oneshift.com's interactive driving guide and maps in detail,' Mr Lee, who is also the managing director, noted.

He added that with the rise of petrol prices, insurance costs and the cost of car ownership in general, many would find the ERP gantry mapping service useful primarily to find out how much the ERP rates are at a specific time before they embark on their journey from point A to point B.

He explained that the current map layout with graphical icons representing the ERP gantries would allow users to easily locate gantries that they might be passing through.

'By clicking on the ERP 'gantry', details specific to that gantry will be shown. Information such as timing specific pricing is reflected.'

Giving an example, Mr Lee noted that if one were to leave from Zion Road towards Bugis Junction, the map will show that the driver will pass through an ERP gantry along River Valley Road.

When the gantry icon is clicked, timings and charges are shown. Thus the viewer will see that from 8am to 8.05am it costs 80 cents to go through the gantry, from 8.05am to 8.30am the charge increases to $1.50, and from 8.30am to 9am drivers have to pay $2.00. 'Just within the half hour, charges have increased by more than twofold the cost of passing through River Valley Road. Hence knowing this information in advance allows car drivers to plan ahead and achieve savings.'

While access to the information is free, one of the company's main sources of income is through interactive online advertising sales and marketing activities via the oneshift.com webpage, Mr Lee said.

'What is exciting about our new map service is that it presents a new avenue for relevant, non-intrusive in-map advertising and marketing opportunities to effectively reach out to our current 85,000 visitors a month,' Mr Lee said.

He added that the company currently has a working relationship with businesses in related industries and 'will certainly look forward to offer this new product to them in the near future'.

Mr Lee said the company uses Google maps as a platform to deliver mapping services. 'However, the mashup information belong to us. We do not have a revenue sharing arrangement with Google, at least not for the moment.'

Mr Lee noted that oneshift.com's map service is not a direct competitor to established map players in the market. 'oneshift.com is geared towards car owners and we consider ourselves a niche player with a specific area of focus.

'Our working partners and clients are primarily in the automotive industry and we will continue to work with them to develop more depth in terms of industry specific B2C (business to consumer) services.'

He added that the company would continue to develop car ownership-specific and other relevant services on the oneshift.com website for drivers who are its primary users. 'Maps are going to be a common feature and mainstay in the next generation of websites where locations are relevant to them. A good example would be property, travel or even food websites where people could locate buildings, holiday spots and eateries.'

To a question, Mr Lee noted that the company has plans to bring its map services on to the mobile platform so that users can use mobile devices to access them.

'Our focus now is to first stabilise our Web mapping service - the map application is still in beta - before bringing it to mobile devices. At the same time, we are also currently talking to technology enablers and vendors to see if our content, research tools and maps can come be integrated on the mobile platform in the near future.'

oneshift.com was co-founded by Mr Lee and a former colleague, Charlie Tan. 'The oneshift.com portal was developed ground up, concept, design and code, by myself, assisted by Charlie (Tan) who is my ex-colleague in our days at DSTA (Defence Science and Technology Agency).

'I left employment to work on Oneshift full-time some two and half years ago, but it wasn't until late 2006 that we launched oneshift.com to the public as a tool primarily to help people make better purchasing decisions when it comes to buying a car.'

He added that the company's start-up capital was just under $10,000.

After a couple of years in operation most of the profit is being ploughed back into the company to grow the business, he noted. 'We have had no government grants, assistance or venture funding, but we are open to options going forward in view of bringing the oneshift.com website to the next level,' Mr Lee said.

This story was first published in The Business Times on 7 July 2008.