Atlanta – Psion Teklogix, a Mississauga, Ont.-based manufacturer of rugged handheld mobile computing solutions, is advising its partners to seize market opportunities by leveraging the company’s core business values and by taking advantage of emerging target customers.
During this year’s Psion Teklogix Ascend 2007 Partner Education Forum held in Atlanta, more than 100 partners as well as Psion Teklogix employees were briefed on the importance of bringing the right products and solutions to market.Ron Caines, president of Americas at Psion Teklogix, says the mobile handheld computing space still holds plenty of market opportunities for the company and its partners to tap into.
“The global handheld rugged mobile computer market has the opportunity to exceed $1.1 billion by 2010,” Caines said. “The Americas accounts for over 50 per cent of this total number.”
Mike Jachimiec, director of channel sales at Psion Teklogix, says moving forward, the company sees tremendous opportunities to grow and expand within markets such as the field services sector. In addition to focusing on specific verticals, the company also plans to focus on five key market segments which include: handheld terminals, wireless infrastructure, RFID technology, imaging technology and speech solutions.
“We want to do several things well,” Jachimiec said. “We have to work with [partners] on the right opportunities in the right markets and we’ll stay focused on that.”Both Caines and Jachimiec stress the importance of Psion Teklogix partners and both also note that the success of it as a company is contingent upon the success of its partner community.
“We view our partners as an extension of our own and we can’t be successful without them,” Caines said. “We have a strong core business in our supply chain logistics and this is something we want to continue to nurture and we’re going to continue to invest in this. We’ll also continue to invest in our partners. [Partners will] see increased marketing activity and they’ll also see that we’ll have a complete set of solutions for all of our chosen markets.”
Currently, Psion Teklogix’s core business and customers come from markets which include: cold chain and warehousing sectors, ports, rail, airports and manufacturing industries. James Poulton, director of product management at Psion Teklogix, makes mention of the fact that the company also expects to grow within the postal and courier industries.
“We’re starting to see a lot of activity here,” Poulton said. “This is an area where they’re starting to make heavy investments.”
Some other target markets Psion Teklogix hopes to penetrate also include the transportation of people and goods, secureID/control and field service and data collection fields.
Psion Teklogix’s market strategy to penetrate into these markets is to remain committed in its path towards innovation and to also increase and improve its overall time to market opportunities with new products.
Most importantly though, Caines says Psion Teklogix wants to enhance and grow its product portfolio to encompass a wide range of solutions that can help meet customers’ needs, whatever and wherever they may be.
From a partner end, Poulton says Psion Teklogix is looking for partners to help better its business and value proposition by participating in its PTX Customer Council.
“The customer council is the formalized go-to group for product development activities like surveys, focus groups, requirement prioritizing, beta testing, etc,” Poulton said. “We’re asking people to opt in to be part of the Psion Teklogix family to give us feedback on an ongoing basis.”
When it comes to attracting partners, Caines says Psion Teklogix’s philosophy is a simple one that focuses on quality as opposed to quantity. Poulton says the company reaches out to all of its current partners and customers and invites all of them to join in on its Customer Council.
“We look for partners who share the same qualities and philosophies as us,” Caines said. “We’re not looking for business partners to just sell products; we’re looking for companies who can help take the buyer-seller relationship and who can turn them into long business relationships. We’re controlling the growth of our partner community.”Up next for Psion Teklogix is the upcoming move of its U.S. headquarters. Currently headquartered in Erlanger, K.Y., the company will be moving on October 18th to Hebron, K.Y. and the new location will also feature a solutions lab, equipment display areas, meeting rooms and more.
