Prior to making this announcement, XRS shares were trading at $3.02. After the announcement, shareholders realized an 85 percent gain on their stock holdings. But the two companies still had to wait until the afternoon of Friday, Oct. 31, the day the transaction was finalized, to open up the communication lines and do the hard work of integrating the two companies.
On Monday, Nov. 3, the chief operating officer of Omnitracs, David Post, arrived at XRS’ corporate office in Eden Prarie, Minn., to meet with employees. The first item on his agenda was to explain the vision of the acquisition and welcome them to Omnitracs. He also laid the foundation for integrating the two companies, starting with the first 30 days.
“The organizations are getting to know each other,” said Post.
XRS is the second acquisition Omnitracs has made since it was purchased from Qualcomm in November, 2013, by Vista Equity Partners. In December, 2013, the new Omnitracs owned by Vista bought Roadnet Technologies, a provider of fleet management software solutions to private fleets.
Post believes Omnitracs is the best possible home for the technology, employees and customers of XRS. The core technology of XRS is a small, in-cab Relay device that communicates via Bluetooth with a wide range of compatible devices, including the driver’s existing smartphone or tablet.
XRS has been offering the Relay device to fleets for no up-front cost with a subscription to its software-as-a-service platform that includes electronic logs, integrated messaging, vehicle and driver performance data, and all other features traditionally associated with onboard computers.
“I think the technology is top notch,” Post said. The Relay platform opens up a new market for Omnitracs: small fleets and owner-operators. This market segment typically wants onboard computing platforms with less sophistication and complexity than Omnitracs’ current MCP product line.
Omnitracs will bring a wider sales and distribution footprint for XRS products and give customers running its legacy XATA Turnpike, MobileMax and Xatanet fleet management applications a better migration path to XRS Relay or the MCP platform, Post said.
“We are intent on supporting all XRS solutions and to offering more choice to customers which will increase satisfaction and retention,” he said.
Maintaining the XRS product platforms and offerings will be an important aspect of the acquisition as will be standardizing the processes and procedures of the combined organization, he added.
Omnitracs is in the process of moving its corporate office to Dallas from San Diego. The engineering and product development teams of XRS will continue working from the Eden Prairie office but Post says consolidation will likely happen in sales, marketing and administrative processes.
One of the top priorities is to create a unified customer relationship management (CRM) system to be the backbone of the two companies going forward. With its combined properties, Omnitracs now has more than 30,000 customers with nearly 1,000,000 mobile assets in 63 countries.
Omnitracs will be holding its first-ever joint user conference — Omnitracs Outlook 2015 — which includes all Omnitracs, RoadNet and XRS users on Feb. 8-11, 2015, in Dallas, Texas.
Attendees can register for the event at https://fleet.omnitracs.com/outlook
