Recipe for Location and Tracking Success

If you asked Geoffrey Moore, author and strategist on transformation and innovation in technology organizations, whether the location and tracking industry has crossed the chasm, I would wager his answer would be a definitive YES!

For sellers in this segment, the sales battlefront is no longer to justify the ROI of mobile resource management (MRM). Fleet owners and employers of mobile workforces now consider MRM a competitive necessity. Instead, the battle wages between feature and price within a field of over 100 suppliers (see GPS Tracking, Vendors and Resellers).

To make matters even more challenging for sellers, technology providers now serve up all the basic components of tracking solutions as off-the-shelf technologies. Any technology-savvy organization can build a location and tracking solution using the following recipe:

Ingredients

Tracking Devices: Select low-cost, integrated, feature-rich units.

User Interface: Optional Garmin fleet management interface via portable navigation devices

Network: Sign a VAR agreement, activate units, and deploy devices to fleet.

Hardware: Why buy when you can rent a cloud?

Spatial Database: One stop shop with Microsoft SQL Server 2008. Wow!

Visualization: Choose Google or Microsoft Virtual Earth.

Billing: It’s never been simpler than with Zuora. Cha ching!

Directions

Blend above ingredients for three months with the help of three talented engineers. Voila! You’ve reached first-field tests. By month six you’re shipping a commercial tracking solution. (Okay, clearly I’m a sales and marketing type, but I’m not really exaggerating for 2008.)

So what does this say about the industry? Certainly the barriers to entry that early players enjoyed have all but disappeared. Basic tracking is now a commodity. The assignment is now to create more intelligent, feature-rich, vertically integrated location and tracking solutions.

In forthcoming blog posts I’ll highlight the vendors to watch…

Vendor References

Tracking Devices

Trimble (TrimTrac location device) http://www.trimble.com/trimtrac.shtml

CalAmp http://www.calamp.com/mrm_lmu1500.shtml

AnyDATA http://www.anydata.com/tracking.php

User Interface

Garmin http://www8.garmin.com/solutions/commercial/fleetmanagementsolutions.jsp

Network

Jasper Wireless www.jasperwireless.com

Hardware

Amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=201590011