London, UK: 24 August, 2010 – As part of its growth strategy Blackbay, a provider of real-time enterprise mobility solutions, has today announced the appointment of enterprise mobility solutions expert Nigel Doust as its new CEO.
“Despite the prevailing economic climate, Blackbay is experiencing an increase in year-on-year revenue growth. Our strong financial position and excellent pipeline of potential customers, means that now is absolutely the right time to drive the company to the next level of its development, establishing Blackbay as one of the leading enterprise mobility solution experts within the field service, postal and transport and logistics sectors ,” said Avi Azulai, Blackbay’s Chairman. “Nigel is the right person to propel Blackbay forward into a market leading position.”
Doust will take up his position as Blackbay’s CEO in early September and joins the company fresh from his position as Vice President at Sybase where he managed and led the Sybase enterprise mobility business in Europe. Previously, Doust was VP Europe for mobile specialist Pointsec where he drove significant market growth. Doust also served as Vice President World Wide Mobility for Extended Systems, another mobility specialist software company. Again he grew the global business and was instrumental in the sale of Extended Systems to Sybase.
“Nigel brings with him extensive experience of enterprise mobility solutions and strong relationships within the market,” continued Azulai. “Importantly for us, Nigel has already displayed outstanding leadership qualities, combined with the ability to continually strengthen and enhance relationships with existing customers and drive revenue from new customers, and new markets.”
“My position at Blackbay provides me with a fantastic opportunity to take a fast growing company to the top of its market,” explained Doust. “Initially, my focus will be on continuing Blackbay’s commitment to deliver market leading levels of service and support to our existing customers, driving sales, and expanding the company’s operations within the North American enterprise mobility solutions space.”
Doust also plans to work closely with Blackbay’s R&D team to drive investment to further increase the features and functionality of the company’s field service, postal and transport and logistics solutions. “It is increasingly important that Blackbay is able to deliver innovative, highly scalable and integrated solutions which support the needs of our current customers and those of new customers, across multiple platforms,” added Doust.
“With Nigel at the helm, Blackbay will be in the best possible position to grow our enterprise mobility solutions market share and to exceed our revenue expectations,” concluded Azulai.
It is not always easy being green but, it is easier than you think. As we all become increasingly aware of just how potentially fragile our planet is, it remains a frightening fact that businesses of all sizes, across all sectors, continue to view the need to operate a Green business as a ‘nice to do’ rather than a ‘must do’.
The subject of integration of service management systems with enterprise-wide solutions and the potential to achieve company-wide benefits is discussed in this month’s main feature.
An enquiry from a reader of Service Management emphasised how field service suppliers are becoming more aware of the possibilities provided by technology and are increasingly discussing the advantages of integrating their service management systems with other solutions. This question was passed to the industry’s suppliers and their response provides food for thought in a number of areas.
Field Officers increase number of visits made and increase number of licences sold, volume of paper work reduced by 1 tonne per week, 80% reduction in number of internal support calls.
London, 13 April 2010 - Capita Business Services run the majority of the administration and collection of TV Licensing, including the field force of Enquiry Officers. Capita has completed a project working with Global IT Service Provider CSC to deploy Blackbay’s Service Connect mobile worker software as a key component of an enterprise mobility solution to enhance the service it delivers to the BBC. The mobile data capture technology has also enabled Capita to benefit from tangible return on investment (ROI), including the elimination of one tonne of paper per week from its operation.
Blackbay Awarded Motorola ISV of the year
Blackbay was recently selected by Motorola Enterprise Mobility as the 2009 Australia/New Zealand Independent Software Vendor (ISV) of the year. Blackbay was chosen for the third year running based on its ability to provide market-leading solutions in partnership with Motorola. Blackbay and Motorola’s largest clients in ANZ include Australia Post and Australian Air Express with over 10,000 users throughout Australia.
For a field service workforce to be truly mobile, it not only necessitates that the workers are in possession of a mobile device, but that these workers are provided the real-time communication and work order completion capabilities via that mobile device (or those devices). For the Best-in-Class, increased productivity and utilization of resources is tantamount as revealed by 60% in Aberdeen’s 2009 Mobile Field Service study.
North American market demand for Blackbay's proven software as a service (SaaS) enterprise mobility software solutions, which can be deployed for as little as US$1 per user per day, has led to the company establishing an operations presence in Ohio, USA.
"The decision to extend our UK, European and Asia Pacific operations into North America, initially within our key business sectors of Field Service and Supply Chain, was driven by our understanding of the importance of meeting the increasing requirement for our mobility solutions with a local presence," said Larry Klimczyk, CEO, Blackbay. "Additionally, Blackbay has a strong financial position which enables us to grasp this growth opportunity firmly with both hands."
Increasing demand for faster, more accurate, real-time information is pushing the boundaries of data capture technology. But is the plethora of bells and whistles getting in the way? Jessica Davies from Logistics Manager.com reports - http://www.logisticsmanager.com/Articles/12916/Too+much+like+an+iphone.html
Now more than ever businesses are under increasing pressure to comply with health and safety guidelines concerning mobile lone workers. But in today’s economic climate businesses should be looking at technology that will help them ensure the safety of their mobile workers at the same time as helping to improve productivity, efficiency and the bottom line.
The value of access to accurate and up-to-date information continues to increase, especially for organisations with mobile workers Remember when you had to wait days for an air conditioning unit to be repaired, and you had no visibility of where a delivery/engineer was, or if a delivery was going to be on time? Enterprise mobility has put an end to all that. It is no longer acceptable for supply chain or service companies not to proactively implement technology that ensures they are providing their customers with the right person, at the right time, with the right goods. Today, supply chain and service companies need to be first time right, every time.
Blackbay, a provider of robust and scalable real-time mobile worker solutions, has announced that its Delivery Connect solution is successfully implemented by Australian Air Express (AaE) to improve customer service by delivering a real-time mobility solution for AaE’s express freight services. AaE, owned by Qantas Airways Ltd and Australia Post, is a leading provider of express freight services throughout Australia with over 1,800 drivers in the field. Blackbay’s Delivery Connect, real-time mobile worker software, is running on Motorola MC70 rugged handheld computers which have been issued to AaE’s drivers.
Christian Harris of Business Computing World speaks to our CEO, Larry Klimczyk on the issues facing the industry and the role Blackbay plays in helping organisations in the Field Service and Supply Chain markets take advantage of mobile worker technology. Follow the link to read the full interview - http://www.businesscomputingworld.co.uk/?p=727.
In today’s business environment, the value of access to accurate and up-to-date information continues to increase. All of us are seeking information, wherever we are, at all times of the day. This is especially true for organisations with mobile workers operating in the field.
At Blackbay our reach is truly global. Our innovative mobile solutions for supply chain and field service operations make us a preferred supplier to major international organisations.
Blackbay has achieved further Enterprise Mobility Validation on Motorola’s latest device offering, the MC55. Blackbay completed Motorola’s Enterprise Mobility Validated Solution Program that includes joint testing at the Motorola Solution Center.
Blackbay announced that it has signed a contract with Star Track Express to supply a real-time mobility solution that will enhance customer service and streamline business processes. Star Track Express, is one of Australia’s leading express freight and logistics providers with over 1,500 drivers in the field, handling over 1,000,000 scans per day.
Attendees at the recent Gartner Wireless & Mobile Summit named Blackbay customer, Royal Mail, as the winner of the inaugural peer award for Wireless and Mobile Excellence. This award honours Royal Mail for excellence based on its delivery of business value, technical implementation and best practices within its wireless initiative.
Blackbay has been included in Gartner’s MarketScope Report for Packaged Mobile Application Platforms1 which rated Blackbay as ‘promising’. Despite the global economic slowdown, Gartner Inc believes adoption of Packaged Mobile Application Platforms will continue to grow at a solid pace, faster than that of organisations opting to build mobile solutions themselves.
Despite the current recession, Blackbay bucks current economic trends by announcing that the company has achieved 52% revenue growth, has increased its mobile worker software solution users by 30,000, increased its successful deployments to more than 150 throughout the world and during 2008 handled over 500 million transactions.
Blackbay is seeing more and more enterprises realise the potential business benefits that can be achieved through the deployment of mobility solutions. Whilst the return on investment was not always clear in the past, mobility is now a strategic imperative with recent Aberdeen research showing significant increases in service margins (25%), improved productivity (13%) and considerable cost reductions for those implementing a mobility strategy.
Australia Post Parcels Division had their first foray into the use of mobile technology several years ago. The Parcels Division developed a tracking system that was deployed on 2,500 devices nationwide “…we developed a system internally with limited experience in developing track and trace systems,” said Brendan Boyd, Manager - Network Distribution and Transport. This initial move into the world of mobile technology proved to be a satisfactory experience, however, after 4 years the system had met its limitations in terms of future development and subsequently needed to be replaced.
Where: Hilton Munich Park Hotel, Munich, Germany When: 06-08 May, 2009
The environment gets tougher - Navigating successfully through difficult times
The world is experiencing significant economic turmoil. Predictions are that many economies in Europe will experience a real recession for the first time in many years. 2009 is for many even more difficult than 2008, and who can predict 2010 and beyond?
In order to meet the growing demand for reliable and secure real-time enterprise mobility solutions Blackbay today announced that it has chosen SOTI Inc as its preferred mobile device management partner.
At Blackbay we are always working to improve the experience of our customers. With this in mind we are pleased to announce the refresh of our website www.blackbay.com.