In machine-to-machine (M2M) communications a lot of vendor differentiation is down to technology. Occasionally you come across a company that differs from its rivals for other reasons. I had a great conversation the other day with Bryan M Eagle III, the President of ROAMWORKS USA, and a guy with so much experience in this space that he’s probably forgotten more than I’ve yet learned.
Founded in 2000, ROAMWORKS is a software and solutions provider specialising in remote asset management. Its middleware platform called ROAM (Remote Operational Asset Management), its application suite and solutions give organisations the ability to track and monitor their mobile and/or fixed assets remotely. And they can do it in real-time through satellite or terrestrial wireless communication networks.
One of the things that differentiates them is their origin. Based in Dubai, ROAMWORKS FZ, LLC, has an R&D centre in Bonn, Germany. The principal investor behind ROAMWORKS is the giant Mansour Group (www.mansourgroup.com). With annual revenues exceeding US$4 billion, the Mansour Group has extensive, long-running partnerships with multinational firms like Caterpillar, Phillip Morris, General Motors and McDonald’s in the Middle East, Africa and Europe. The US division of ROAMWORKS is a more recent addition, having been launched last October.
We’re all fairly used to US-based companies rolling out in the Middle East. It’s not so often that we report on the reverse process. That may or may not signify a trend, but what I found particularly interesting was Bryan’s explanation of ROAMWORKS’ differentiated business model when I asked, “How is your company’s business approach different?”
Some M2M system vendors deploy “legions of SIs (system integrators) to go out and build solutions for people,” he said. “But we keep it internal to ourselves and work with clients. Some of these vendors have large numbers of staff, but wireless is not in a plug-and-play state. Others – both medium and large companies – don’t want to deploy resources to build the applications themselves. But in partnership with them, and their knowledge of their business, we’ll build the best solutions for them.”
Business models vary, of course. “We have a very flexible approach. Some of our customers have relationships with their mobile network operator,” Eagle continued. “Others want us to do everything from soup to nuts.” They want ROAMWORKS to manage it in a cloud, and they will log in and use it.
“What we found from delivering applications to customers like Coca-Cola and FedEx is that you soon get ‘The Call’. ‘We love this and that,’ they say, ‘but it would be neat if it could also do …’ There are always changes and enhancements to be made, so the platform we’ve built allows rapid application delivery. There’s a 5-week development cycle, then customer enhancements or our own are added every 5 weeks.
“For example, when we delivered a platform for (international couriers) DHL, they said our road vehicles won’t need a Speeding Alarm. We looked at them, but they had installed speed governors and were adamant this wasn’t needed. In the end we simply took it out of the reporting (not the functionality). Then a red dot appeared, signifying a speeding alarm. And another. They said there must be something wrong with your systems. We said, maybe: we’ll check. It turned out that almost all of the governors in this middle eastern territory had been disengaged. Capturing Speeding Alarms is now a major part of checking driver performance,” said Eagle.
“I liken it to building a house,” he added. “On the plans the Master Bedroom is here, and the Living Room is here. Then you build the footings and people start using the building and they say, ‘I don’t want the closet here.’ But you’ve got load-bearing walls in place. It’s a bit like software architecture. When things start to change these become major overhauls. Our system is designed to have very few of these walls. We give customers the tools to have movable walls.
Eagle is heading up ROAMWORKS US, which actually covers all the Americas. Having launched the new division late last year, they are now undertaking market tests as far apart as West Virginia, USA and Quito, Ecuador. There are no roll-outs to report yet, and he’s unsure where the orders will come from first. But following a recent article in the Wall Street Jornal about the lack of telematic monitoring systems in the region’s construction equipment he feels it won’t be long in coming. “In construction, Komatsu, John Deere and Caterpillar are about the only ones that have it. People today are buying the equipment that is monitored. If we’re talking about a $300,000 piece of kit, is an $800 system and a $15-20 per month monitoring fee too much to ask?” he wondered.
I know what I think, but I guess the answer’s up to you.
— Jeremy Cowan, Editor, M2M Now
