Stig
Pedersen, Director of Marketing Strategy Survey/GIS,
Magellan Professional on key products, focus and
trends
Tell us about the transition
from Thales to Magellan?
At
the end of August, private equity firm Shah Capital
Partners (SCP) completed the acquisition of Thales Navigation
and the company was renamed Magellan. This is a great
milestone for the company and puts us in a position
to compete more effectively as an independent GPS/GIS
company with a focused shareholder who brings great
operational expertise to the mix. The entire company
– consumer and professional businesses - is part
of the acquisition so we will continue to serve the
survey, GIS, OEM and consumer markets we serve today.
We plan to expand our business and build on our unique
ability to leverage the high-volume consumer manufacturing
and ease-of-use expertise to bring cost-effective and
user-friendly solutions to the professional markets.
We see significant interest in the Survey/ GIS markets
in particular, for more accessible solutions and we
will also tap businesses that have not been able yet
to take advantage of GPS.
Your key products?
Our survey and GIS products are now marketed under
the Magellan Professional brand - a brand that illustrates
both the heritage and pioneering force of our company,
but also conveys that this product line is designed
for professionals. The flagship products in this line
include the ProMark3, Z-Max. Net and the MobileMapper
CE. All of these solutions are flexible products that
allow customers to get the GPS functionality and performance
they need at a cost that their business can afford.
- ProMark3 is a centimeter accurate GPS survey solution
that also allows surveyors to offer GIS services without
further investment in equipment. ProMark3 continues
the leadership of the ProMark2, the best-selling single-frequency
GPS survey receiver on the market. - The Z-Max.Net
GNSS surveying system is one of the .Net generation
of Magellan solutions
that offer VRS, FKP, NTRIP and GPRS, RTCM V3.0 network
communication. It's also the most flexible survey
GPS available, offering simplicity of operation and
the strongest RTK in the business. - MobileMapper
CE is also part of the .Net generation, offering the
same communication flexibility for mobile mapping
professionals. By teaming with a variety of software
business partners such as ESRI, Geosurf, Geospatial
Experts and others, the MobileMapper CE is the perfect
handheld GPS data collector for applications like
asset management, utilities, forestry, agriculture
and many more.
How
are your offerings different from the others?
In addition to
being more flexible than offerings from competitors,
Magellan Professional solutions offer leading technology
advantages but with a lower investment both in terms
of learning curve and expense. ProMark3, for example,
is half the cost of the nearest competitor and allows
surveyors to perform centimeter accurate surveys with
only three-screen operation in the field. ProMark3 guarantees
easier operation, faster survey and reliable data. Magellan
Prism™ technology reduces survey data collection
time significantly over competitors for a marked increase
in productivity. Our products are all about giving an
advantage in productivity to customers and we can only
do that if we provide features that enable rapid surveying
and data collection like fast signal acquisition, multiple
communication options, and ease of use.
How
do you differentiate your consumer and professional
products?
The
customers are very different so naturally the solutions
are also very different. Our consumer products focus
on navigation and are based on 3-meter accuracy, which
is plenty accurate enough for consumer usage scenarios.
They incorporate features like multimedia and points
of interest, waypoint tracking, and other applications
that are useful to drivers and outdoor enthusiasts.
Magellan Professional products can benefit from some
of these “consumer” features and from underlying
technologies, such as Bluetooth connectivity, color
touchscreen and turn-by-turn route guidance. However
the professional products require much higher accuracies
for the collection of positioning data, enhanced ruggedness,
strong performance and reliability of surveys. Both
product lines benefi t from increasingly more portable
form factors, power consumption advances, simpler user
interfaces and cost-reduction, but a higher level of
performance and accuracy will continue to be key in
the professional line.
How
do you educate your potential customers?
Introducing the
Magellan Professional brand is one of the important
first steps in this education. We don't want our professional
customers to mistake the Magellan brand for a consumer
brand, so we have dedicated a professional brand to
this business. We plan to remind customers and prospects
frequently in the next few months through advertising
and other communication campaigns that highlight the
"Professional" in Magellan Professional. And
when you are talking about the integration of GLONASS,
Instant RTK technology, and centimeter-accurate surveying,
it's unlikely that our professional customers will be
confused about the level of performance Magellan Professional
solutions provide compared to Magellan consumer products.
How
do you see the advent of GNSS systems like Galileo?
Magellan is a huge proponent of Galileo and has been
intimately involved in the development of the first
Galileo receivers. The introduction of this system
underscores the coming expansion of this market. Galileo
will increase signal availability when it's fully
deployed, but it will be years still before it is,
so for now, we are adamant about not passing on the
cost of incorporating a technology that can offer
no benefit to our customers. When Galileo is ready
for deployment, we'll be among the first to provide
compatibility and dual functionality in products where
the benefi t will truly be felt by the customer.
How
prepared are you to offer products and services compatible
to the range of existing and proposed GNSS systems?
Magellan - then
Ashtech - created the very first GLONASS receivers and,
as I mentioned, we have been at the forefront of Galileo
receiver development, so we probably have a technology
advantage over competitors in this area. We have chipsets
today that are Galileo-ready. The implementation of
technology compatible with these systems is not an obstacle
for Magellan. However, we are committed to providing
these technologies when they can benefit the customer.
Otherwise, we're just playing a marketing game and selling
technologies to customers that they can't possibly use
today.
What
are your strategies to deal with the market like India
which is too price sensitive?
Markets like
India are actually the strongest opportunities for our
growth because Magellan has a cost structure and product
options that can meet the stringest price demands of
these regions. No competitor will be able to offer the
low-cost solutions that Magellan can because of it's
highvolume consumer manufacturing. We see India as a
very important and promising market both with Survey
and GIS and view Indian users as being very technically
savvy in the purchase and use of GNSS receivers. In
the region we see an above average adoption of our GNSS
technology in India versus other countries in the region.
With
a talent for reading the market and developing
products to meet market needs, Stig Pedersen is
responsible for developing all of Magellan’s
survey and GIS products for a variety of customers,
including federal agencies, local law enforcement
agencies, forestry departments, agricultural organizations,
city governments, and more.
Pedersen
spent eight years at Leica Geosystems, where he
held a number of senior positions in both product
management and business leadership. During this
period of rapid growth within Leica’s GPS
business, Pedersen oversaw all aspects of the
GIS business from product development to sales.
Earlier in his career Pedersen was a key contributor
to the Magellan consumer line of GPS products
now created and marketed by Magellan Professional.
He was employed by Magellan Systems until 1995
in program and product management positions, as
well as vital research roles. Magellan Systems
acquired Ashtech in 1997 and became Magellan Corporation,
which was then acquired by the Thales Group in
2001, and renamed Thales Navigation. Recently
acquired by private equity firm SCP, the company
is now Magellan and maintains its survey and GIS
business under the Magellan Professional brand.
Pedersen holds a B.S. and an M.S. in Business
Administration from the Aarhus School of Business
in Denmark. He is working as Director, Marketing
Strategy, Magellan Professional.
.gif)
