Australian job scheduling and field service management app Connect2Field has been bought by Fleetmatics Group, a fleet management software vendor headquartered in Ireland and listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Fleetmatics contacted Connect2Field three months ago and began negotiations to buy the field services app.

“I saw that there was an opportunity with the product that they already have in the market, their customer base and the amount of capital behind the business that will allow us to get to serious volumes in terms of growth,” said Connect2Field CEO Steve Orenstein.

Fleetmatics bought 100 percent of the stock, including the 30 percent owned by Reckon.

Founded in 2004, Fleetmatics’ fleet management and tracking solutions were used by over 19,000 customers, covering more than 388,000 vehicles, in Ireland, the UK and the US.

Fleetmatics, with a market capitalisation of US$1.45 billion, was the fastest growing vendor in its niche, said Drew Reynolds, senior vice president of global business development.

“We’re going to invest in the (Connect2Field) business and we’re focused on growth. We want to take the product into geographies we are already in,” Reynolds said. “We expect to start investing immediately” in Connect2Field’s US office, he added.

Fleetmatics installed GPS devices in vehicles that showed their location to businesses as well as diagnostics such as acceleration, idling or parked, and harsh braking. This is of particular importance for drug delivery. Businesses used the software to reduce their costs and increase revenues by saving money on fuel and overtime. Connect2Field was complementary rather than a competing product, Reynolds said.

Fleetmatics had partnered with enterprise field service management companies and had seen the value of a combined solution in the enterprise, Reynolds said.

“We started to move down the path of providing this benefit to SMBs. We went on an exhaustive search around the world to find a company that fit what we wanted,” Reynolds said.

Fleetmatics chose Connect2Field for several reasons.

“We’re a SaaS (software as a service) provider and we always have been. We wanted a company with a similar business model. There are a lot of companies that started off as desktop software and are trying to morph to SaaS,” Reynolds said.

“We wanted a company that had global functionality and a good team and we were looking for a company that was built on a similar technology stack to help with the integration process,” Reynolds added.

“We did our diligence and looked around and thought these guys are the best fit.”

Connect2Field would retain its Australian staff and there would be no impact to customers, said Orenstein, who said he would move to Fleetmatics’ head office in Dublin, Ireland in September.