The manufacturing floor at Multi-Tech (News - Alert) Systems Inc. was buzzing like Santa’s workshop in December. That was the message conveyed by CEO Rod Landers in an interview with M2M Evolution magazine just before the holidays. OK, he didn’t say it quite that way, but you get the picture.
The point is that Multi-Tech Systems is on a roll after installing new management, which Landers said is returning the company to a culture of innovation, agility, and customer service.
“Multi-Tech is back, and we’re going to make some things happen in 2014,” he said.
The People
Multi-Tech Systems invited Landers to join the board a few quarters ago in an effort to expand its industry knowledge mindshare. Landers founded Spectrum Design Solutions, which is now part of Digi International (News - Alert), and has held senior-level positions at Digi, Logic Product Development, Motorola, and Safe Retrieve. The board liked the ideas Landers brought to the table and asked him to step in as CEO.
“The company was headed in a direction of trying to do full solution selling, and it was difficult to institutionalize that,” said Landers. “I said ‘what we are is a good platform on which customers can create their own solutions.’ The board really liked that message, but previous management was having a hard time swallowing that.”
The installation of Landers as Multi-Tech Systems’ new CEO was publicly announced Nov. 4, and he quickly got to work reconfiguring the Multi-Tech management team.
Scott Wilken was brought in as CTO. Landers’ former supervisor at Logic Product Development, Wilken comes from a rapid design culture, so was tapped to help Multi-Tech with its speed and efficiency.
Top management also includes existing executives who have recently been elevated to the C suite. That includes 30-year Multi-Tech veteran Del Palacheck, who had been vice president of manufacturing, and was recently promoted to COO, and new CFO Bruce Richardson (News - Alert), who had been vice president of finance. Landers explained that Palacheck holds an MBA, is good with numbers, and has been in manufacturing his entire professional life, so he’s very tied into that community. As vice president of manufacturing, Palacheck’s group was very efficient, Landers noted, with a better than 99 percent success rate on the floor. As for Richardson, Landers said he’s been capable in addressing cash strategy and effectively had been performing as CFO even before being given the title.
As for the Multi-Tech Systems staff at large, the company is working to better configure its existing 200 employees so they are positioned to innovate. That includes putting together an advanced product team. The company also plans to add new employees to support its initiatives in the U.S., and in the Asia Pacific (where it will make a big push in 2015) and EMEA (“hitting Europe hard in 2014”) regions. Landers was not ready to disclose further hiring details as of press time.
The Positioning
Privately owned Multi-Tech Systems has already seen improvements, including exceeding financial projections, in the short time since Landers has taken the reins. Landers chalks that up to making it easier for customers to do business with Multi-Tech Systems; prioritizing things based on large customer needs; arming distribution partners with the pricing and tools they need to successfully bring product to market; and just generally being able to move quickly when a good opportunity presents itself.
Multi-Tech Systems has delivered machine-to-machine communications solutions since 1970 and boasts more than 22 million devices deployed worldwide. But the company in recent years had been losing some opportunities by not coming together on price for customers, Landers explained, adding in some cases the gap between seller and would-be buyer was very thin, sometimes a difference of just 2 percent. Landers is working to correct that situation by analyzing customer relationships and being more flexible for those businesses seen as probable long-term customers.
“You don’t make all your money on one deal. You help customers, and they generally come back again and again and again,” noted Landers. “This is nothing but Business 101.”
The company is also positioning to be more nimble in responding to new opportunities. Here’s an example of how Multi-Tech Systems did just that.
ARM Ltd (News - Alert). recently called on Multi-Tech Systems to ask for its assistance in creating a platform for the AT&T Hackathon taking place just before CES in Las Vegas. The microprocessor company tapped Multi-Tech because it has pre-certified modules, and the company was concerned about getting its solution together in time for the early January event. The request was made in November, during his second week on the job, said Landers, and Multi-Tech Systems hit the deadline, which was the end of December.
With this work, ARM was able to deliver a solution, which leverages the technology of several partners to show what can be done on top of ARM’s Embedded platform, for this show at the scale it needed, Landers explained. And rather than simply providing its typical products as part of the effort, Landers added, Multi-Tech Systems made the extra effort to look outwardly and call on its own partners to make it all work.
The Product
Multi-Tech Systems has long had a focus on helping customers achieve the shortest path to M2M connectivity. It works with clients, which include both end user customers, integrators and large OEMs, in various markets to wirelessly-enable their solutions with analog, Bluetooth, cellular and GPS connectivity. What it doesn’t already have in its portfolio it can design, as its 80-some patents demonstrate.
The company’s portfolio includes three product lines. All three will be retained under the leadership of Landers, but there may be some re-segmentation of products to enable the company to better address user needs. The company also plans to innovate more on the broadband and wireless fronts.
Its family of unified communications solutions address fax and VoIP, and target IT types. For example, its FaxFinder is a collection of customer premises-based fax servers that do fax-to-IP conversion and allow faxes to be delivered as PDF or tiff files. Landers said Multi-Tech is working to innovate on this product line to make it more useful to users such as attorneys and those in the medical profession. Rather than doing analog-to-IP conversions, he said, this kind of solution could support environments with IP lines coming in and analog equipment on the premises.
Routers, modems and open communications gateways represent another product line at Multi-Tech Systems. Routers address cellular and other transport. The Linux-based MultiConnect OCG gateways enable customers to put their own code in the box, and add capabilities via expansion cards, so they can pull in, analyze and issue reports about sensor data.
Then there’s Multi-Tech’s embedded product line, which includes a family of pre-certified SocketModems.
Asked what the company is offering in terms of products that are new and exciting, Landers points to the QuickCarrier USB-D, which the company bills as the industry’s first true end-to-end M2M dongle. The consistency, reliability and upgradability of the QuickCarrier USB-D is important in M2M deployments, which can involve large numbers of unmanned devices. Other features of the QuickCarrier USB-D include AT command compatibility and pre-certification by major regulatory agencies, an internal antenna, short message service, Windows and Linux drivers, and support for 3G HSPA+ and EV-DO.
Landers said the cellular dongle is getting leverage from digital signage applications, as beginning in the first quarter of 2014 it will enable users to leverage it for remote management of multiple assets, such as a collection of digital signs.
The company’s MultiConnect OCG gateways are also an exciting area of activity, added Landers, explaining they can now give users visibility into end devices, and populate end devices with new or updated capabilities and instructions. Later in 2014 Multi-Tech expects to launch a router running on OCG.
The Partners
Today more than half of Multi-Tech’s products get to market through the company’s distributors, which include such major names as Arrow, Avnet and Ingram Micro (News - Alert), among others. Between 10 and 20 percent are delivered by value-added resellers.
Multi-Tech refers to these companies as partners, but Landers said until recently the company has not always treated them as true partners. That’s why Landers and his team have embarked on an effort to ask these companies about their goals and how Multi-Tech can help meet them.
“That’s a big change,” he said.
The Pivot
The new management and positioning at Multi-Tech Systems represent more of a pivot than a wholesale change, Landers said. But make no mistake about it, he said, they represent a change of course.
All of the above are efforts that Landers believes will enable Multi-Tech to innovate rather than simply compete with others in the M2M space; to grow outside the U.S.; and to provide a platform that is so easy to understand and use that it turns the industry on its head. Landers compares this product positioning to what Apple did with the iPhone and the App Store.
“I’m bringing back the innovation culture that used to be here when Multi-Tech System’s founder Raghu Sharma was here.”
Edited by Stefania Viscusi