Miami, FL – Road America was awarded the Silver Stevie Award for Information Technology Department of the Year in the 2012 American Business Awards. The American Business Awards are the nation’s premier business awards program. All organizations operating in the United States are eligible to submit nominations – public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small.

More than 3,000 nominations from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry were submitted this year for consideration in a wide range of categories, and for IT Department of the Year, Road America was chosen as the winner..

In January of 2011, the Road America IT Department, in collaboration with AT&T, launched a pilot test of LocateMe, which uses AT&T’s Phone Locator Service to pinpoint the addresses where emergency roadside assistance calls originate. Applicable on both land and wireless lines across all major U.S. carriers, including AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and Metro PCS, and now fully operational, LocateMe can locate over 90% of the Road America customer base. In the summer of 2011, AT&T published a case study to highlight the shared success of this project.

“On behalf of everyone at Road America, I must say that we are extremely honored to be the recipient of a Silver Stevie Award. Our IT Department works around the clock to provide the most innovative solutions in our industry; and they, like the rest of the Road America team, are dedicated to offering unparalleled support to our clients and their customers,” said Dennis Fantis, President, Road America.

In 2011, following the success of LocateMe, the Road America IT Department started developing a mobile roadside assistance application for simultaneous launch across all major smart phone platforms using the same source code. Using Rapid Application Development (RAD) techniques the team developed Drive On and, by the fall of 2011, the app became available in web stores for iPhone, Android and Blackberry.



Finalists were chosen by more than 140 business professionals nationwide during preliminary judging in April and May. Over 10 specialized judging committees determined Stevie Award placements from among the Finalists during final judging.