Navman Wireless Hones Focus on Vertical Markets for Maximum Growth

By Nicole Zaro Stahl, Hacienda Network Staff Writer

Navman Wireless's fleet tracking, two-way messaging, and integrated satellite navigation systems have propelled it into a global leadership position in the GPS fleet tracking and management solutions industry.

Over the past few years the company has fine-tuned its focus to concentrate on five global vertical markets-construction, transportation, mining, cold chain, and service vehicles - which offer rich potential for growth. The efforts have borne fruit as Navman Wireless saw its business bound from roughly 100,000 subscribers In 2010 to 175,000 subscribers by the end of this year. It now has customers in 14 countries on five continents around the world. In August, that track record earned Navman a place on the 2012 Inc. 500|5000 list of the fastest-growing privately held U.S. companies.

"Fleet managers around the world use our products to monitor vehicle and equipment location in real time, to communicate with drivers and equipment operators, and to generate detailed analytics that can help fine-tune operations and reduce costs," Renaat Ver Eecke, Vice President and General Manager of North America, relates.

What makes the company unique is an extremely agile platform, which allows its software to be easily tailored to accommodate new applications and languages in a very short period of time.

"While the vehicles in our targeted industries are all quite different from each other, our product has been built on a single platform from the ground up, making it much more efficient to deliver services," Ver Eecke explains. "We can work with a new customer with a new language and have a system operational in two months."

Most software professionals will recognize this is a remarkable accomplishment, especially for Asian "double-byte" languages, whose character sizes are twice that of their Western counterparts. "The technology is very difficult," Ver Eecke remarks. "It's like having to recode software applications for the Y2K project."

Under the leadership of Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Paresh Nagda, the local research and development team has had a lot to do with this success. Nagda opened the office at 4301 Hacienda Drive in 2008, assembling a talented team with expertise in leading-edge technologies such as GPS, wireless, and HTML 5. With recent releases of iPhone, iPad, and Android applications, that office has grown to 22 engineers currently working on ground-breaking analytics tools. It is also actively hiring.

"Our industry is in its infancy almost everywhere around the world," comments Ver Eecke. Probably the most highly penetrated market is the United Kingdom, with a rate of 23 percent, compared to a global rate of six percent. Latin America is "hugely" under-penetrated, and so is China, where the potential is massive. In China especially, the ability to track food shipments and ensure cold-chain stability is of tremendous value in avoiding spoilage and waste. With such glowing prospects for growth, Navman Wireless has invested in an overseas infrastructure and is actively courting customers worldwide.

Originally founded in 1987 in New Zealand, the company is now headquartered in Glenview, Illinois, with additional locations in Australia, New Zealand, China, Mexico, Taiwan, Italy, Ireland, Scotland, the U.K., Singapore, and India. Its global headcount is 295. For more information, visit www.navmanwireless.com.

Photo: Navman's technology is available platforms including the iPhone and iPad. (Photo Courtesy of Navman Wireless)

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