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Rand McNally moved to elevate its place in the connected vehicle space by acquiring Fleetsu, the company announced April 12.
Fleetsu is a fleet management and vehicle insight solutions provider based in Subiaco, Australia. Rand McNally is best known as a mapping software and hardware provider but also provides analytics and fleet management services.
The acquisition will help the company expand its global presence in the analytics and connected vehicle space.
“We have a very feature-rich platform today,” Rand McNally CEO Aaron Dannenbring told Transport Topics. “When I had come into the company and evaluated where we were at relative to what we believe is state-of-the-art and from a capability standpoint, it became very clear that there are opportunities for Rand McNally to dramatically improve the offerings that we have in the areas of analytics.”
Dannenbring added there are many new use cases out there from driver safety, fleet efficiency and fuel management. The supply chain disruptions have also brought many challenges for companies. Because of this he believes analytics has become a really important aspect of how a platform can deliver value to vehicle fleets.
“We have many customers that are happily using our platform and our current hardware,” Dannenbring said. “But we want to make a jump to ever more value adding services like fuel efficiency, like driver safety, like engine performance. And so, we were kind of scouring the market for companies that would bring those capabilities natively.”
Dannenbring
The Fleetsu acquisition helps reach those goals by bringing a new customer base alongside software solution designed to collect, analyze and monetize fleet data. Its services cover real-time vehicle location, fuel costs management, automated logbooks and driver safety scorecards. Rand McNally said merging its fleet business with the new platform, data and analytics capabilities creates a global enterprise that can drive future innovative solutions.
“They have an incredibly strong platform, great data management capabilities and the analytics that go on top of that,” Dannenbring said. “It is a team with very strong technology acumen. And so, it became quite obvious to us that by taking our current strong base that we have with our current offerings and expanding that, especially in the area of analytics, data management and the Fleetsu platform capabilities, that we are building a world leading fleet management solution.”
A report by Allied Market Research Feb. 28 found that the global fleet management market is experiencing accelerated growth with forecasts predicting the industry will reach $52.5 billion in value by 2030. That is more than double its current value.
“Rand McNally has a good position today, but if you think about how that market is going to expand, it’s going to expand based on those companies that can offer ever more value-added services that can help vehicle fleets save money, drive safer, reduce their insurance premiums,” Dannenbring said. “The Fleetsu platform on top of Rand McNally’s already significant capability, really puts us in a pull position to be able to address those emerging use cases.”
Dannenbring added it’s not just about complementing current services but also future-proofing the business to capture those opportunities that are going to emerge over the next decade. Rand McNally also gets an influx of talent that has experience with these technologies.
“As part of the acquisition there are no layoffs planned either at Rand McNally or on the Fleetsu team,” Dannenbring said. “We’re just delighted by the capabilities that they bring to us and the inventiveness and innovative spirit that they have.”
Rand McNally will fold those services and operations into its own brand name as part of the acquisition.
Fleetsu founder Jakub Felinski will transition to the role of chief innovation officer.
Felinski
“Fleetsu has quickly built a reputation grounded in being hyper-focused on meeting the needs of our customers, no matter how complex,” Felinski said. “With Rand McNally’s strong navigation and transportation expertise and our already deep bench of leading engineers focused on creating technology data solutions, we are confident that we will be moving the industry forward. We look forward to expanding our combined global business.”
Rand McNally also saw the global reach it would gain as a compelling reason behind the acquisition. Fleetsu doesn’t just have operations in Australia, but also throughout the Middle East, some business in South America and Europe.
Teleo Capital purchased Rand McNally toward the end of 2020. The private equity firm more recently bought Fleetsu with a plan to combine the fleet organizations as part of its pledge to significantly increase its investment in solutions for the transportation market.
