TMW Marks Progress With Innovative Computing Corp.
By Dan Leone, Staff Reporter
This story appears in the Sept. 27 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
GRAPEVINE, Texas — Since acquiring Innovative Computing Corp. late last year, TMW Systems has implemented organizational changes that have made integrating with that company’s software easier, at least from a vendor perspective.
PeopleNet CEO Ron Konezny, speaking to Transport Topics on the exhibit floor here during TMW’s 2010 TransForum conference, said that the TMW-owned Innovative was a “more reliable” partner.
It used to be that “you never knew when it was going to get done,” Konezny said, referring to the pace at which Innovative would complete integrations to other technologies.
Beachwood, Ohio-based TMW put former Qualcomm Inc. executive Ray West in the driver’s seat as vice president and general manager of Innovative. West succeeded Deborah Betancourt in that role. Deborah Betancourt is the daughter of Ernie Betancourt, who ran Innovative for years before selling to TMW.
“What we needed to do was make a couple of leadership changes,” said David Wangler, chief executive officer of TMW. “We organized the development teams, reorganized the support teams, brought some TMW people into the business.”
One thing that TMW has not done since acquiring Innovative is to subordinate that unit’s transportation management software to TMW’s own green-screen software, TL2000.
Both applications run on IBM I, the operating system formerly known as AS/400. Applications on that platform have a text-only user interface that, while dated, is lauded for its efficiency in trucking and other businesses that perform extensive data entry.
Wangler said TMW did not have plans to consolidate its IBM I applications, and that TL2000 and Innovative IES will remain separately supported for the foreseeable future.
Meanwhile, on the TransForum exhibit floor, technology vendors continued to prepare for final implementation of CSA, the new federal safety rating system for trucking companies.
“There’s a lot of tension because of CSA,” said Norm Ellis, vice president and general manager of Qualcomm Enterprise Services. There will be “a much greater level of exposure” for fleets, once the system is fully deployed and being enforced nationwide.
Qualcomm’s big technology offering on the safety front involves the company’s “predictive analytics” tools. Such software pulls data off of a truck, matches it with a driver identification number and endeavors to give fleet managers a picture not only of that driver’s safety record, but also a prediction about incidents and accidents that driver is likely to have in the future.
Qualcomm, like other vendors, has incorporated the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s publicly available algorithms into its software. This allows the company’s customers to generate what are essentially CSA report cards — a real-time picture of how their drivers are, or are not, measuring up to their peers in like-sized fleets.
Taking it a step further, Qualcomm is incorporating the CSA algorithm into its predictive analytics software. Ellis said that this will push adoption of predictive software into the mainstream.
“Before, you had to be an outlier,” Ellis said, referring to the sparse adoption of predictive analytics tools by carriers he regarded as technologically progressive.
However, with CSA looming, many more fleets “now have an incentive” to explore predictive analysis, Ellis said.
Qualcomm’s new predictive offering is due out next year, Ellis said.
