Wireless carriers adding fleet management services to portfolio

Telus Mobility and Rogers Wireless are capitalizing on a fragmented fleet-management and asset-tracking industry to announce new partnerships allowing the two cell phone companies to expand into this business. Both wireless operators say they can offer a turnkey solution to companies that have a mobile component to their business, whether it pertains to employees or vehicles. Rogers has partnered with WebTech Wireless Inc., while Telus is working with Complete Innovations. The companies are offering a range of services addressing a number of different companies with differing needs. Dan Anzarut, associate principal of vertical marketing at Telus Business Solution, tells Report on Wireless that the company has been supporting the transportation sector for 10 years with its Mike service. This new offering, he says, is "an overlay of GPS on top of these existing solutions."Mansell Nelson, a VP at Rogers Wireless, says its respective service will certainly help companies with smaller fleets. "If you're a fleet operator with 30 vehicles, three or four years ago, this would have been a pretty intimidating exercise. You probably would have stuck with the yellow sticky pads and a radio," he says. The Rogers executive adds that deciding to go with a hosted solution makes it easier to address the lower end of the market, and based on feedback from smaller fleet operators, "we made it really simple for small operators to enjoy the same technology that only large operators could boast of historically." But both companies say this is more than just offering a bundle of fleet management services. They offer potential customers a single point of contact as well as the ability to integrate multiple services on the same bill. Nelson says that previously, companies had to deal with multiple parties to get this type of service. "We really thought it made sense to, as I say, ‘rogersize' this whole effort and...develop a Rogers product that solves the many pain points that we felt were inhibiting large-scale adoption of the technology," he says. Wireless carriers can also combine the enterprise type services with their respective fleet management and asset tracking services. "It's about an integrated supply chain- and logistics-management," says Tom Haber, Telus' director of industry marketing. "So not only is it delivering an application such as GPS software, it's also being able to install the equipment, having the network to be able to deliver that to the client, to be able to tie in the network connectivity in a way that's going to be seamless with the application and a way to support that application and service, too," he adds. Positive market potential According to both companies, there is substantial opportunity to make some money in this market. "If you look at our history with Mike and our penetration in the transportation sector I think that Telus has an opportunity to capture dominant share in this space," Anzarut says. "We're already in the game and we've been there for a long time and there's an opportunity to maintain and grow that share." Rogers also believes that it can land some big wins as well. According to Nelson, there are two million trucks in the service fleet area, 600,000 in the transportation and logistics space, and 850,000 trailers. "We actually think there is a significant under-penetrated market opportunity for us," he says.

Wireless carriers adding fleet management services to portfolio

News | 04/26/2007 12:00 pm EDT

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