John Graham likes to think in nautical terms. This much was apparent during his opening remarks at the Omnitracs Outlook user conference on Feb. 9 in Dallas, Texas.
Graham, a former Surface Warfare Officer in the U.S. Navy, took the helm of Omnitracs in November, 2013, after Vista Equity Partners purchased the company from its founder, Qualcomm, for $800 million in cash.
Omnitracs came with a bundle of related technologies. Besides getting a mobile fleet management platform, Vista took command of the predictive models of FleetRisk Advisors and the cloud-based transportation management software and load board from Sylectus.
As the new chief executive officer for Omnitracs, Graham said his first task was to “steady the ship.” Communication was critical in the early stages; employees had to know where they were going. He and the new management team also immediately got to work moving the data center and corporate headquarters out of San Diego.
One of the main reasons for moving the office to Dallas was to put the company in closer proximity to its customers in the United States and in Europe, Asia and South America.
The next step was to “set the rudder” by expanding the company’s profitability. This was necessary to increase staff and obtain funding needed to grow by way of acquisitions.
In December, 2013, Omnitracs purchased Roadnet Technologies, a provider of fleet management software solutions to private fleets. Less than a year later, it purchased XRS Corp., a publicly traded entity, for $178 million to deepen its reach into fleets seeking in-cab and out-of-the cab, smart device-based applications.
