Below are the excerpts of a conversation between MultiTech systems and Insights Success. Throughout the interaction, you will learn how the company provides IoT products and services to enhance its customer’s value using its historical legacy of innovations.
Kindly brief us about your organization your vision, mission, and your values.
MultiTech designs, develops and manufactures data communications equipment for the industrial Internet of Things — connecting physical assets to business processes to deliver enhanced value. Our commitment to quality and service excellence means you can count on MultiTech products and people to address your needs, while our history of innovation ensures you can stay ahead of the latest technology with a partner who will be there for the life of your solution.
Our Vision:
To be the preferred provider for innovative connected technology destined to transform our world.
Our Mission:
To make connected technology easy to adopt and use by focusing on customer needs, developing innovative solutions, outpacing market change, leveraging best-in-class processes, and empowering our team to achieve and grow.
Our Values:
Creativity: Delivering ground-breaking innovation for more than 40 years requires visionary thinking, a culture of continual learning, inspired invention and a relentless focus on finding new ways to solve real-world problems.
Performance: Whether from our products or our team, we are committed to optimal performance. We hold ourselves accountable for the quality and reliability of the technology we produce, as well as the discipline required to produce it.
People: Collaboration, understanding, mutual respect are central to our effectiveness, innovation, and longevity. As such, we extend kindness and transparency to everyone who touches or is touched by our business – our customers, partners, suppliers and, most importantly, our team.
Please tell us about the Founder/CEO along with describing their overall professional journey.
Raghu Sharma, Founder (deceased) — A native of New Delhi, India, Dr. Sharma received a bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Delhi in 1957. He also earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the prestigious Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India. While working as a Senior Science Fellow at the National Physics Laboratory on microwave technology, he decided to seek a Ph.D. Although accepted by both Harvard and MIT, he chose to attend the University of Minnesota where he earned a master’s of Science in Electrical Engineering and a Ph.D.
In 1970, he sold his first acoustic coupler and MultiTech Systems, Inc. was launched. By 1978, sales reached over one million dollars.
Stefan Lindvall, CEO – Stefan Lindvall brings more than 20 years of high-level experience in the wireless industry to MultiTech. Lindvall founded Connected Development, one of the leading wireless design services companies in the U.S. Prior to Connected Development, Stefan served as President of the Americas at Wavecom and before that held various leadership positions at Sony-Ericsson and Ericsson including, Vice President m2m Sales, Americas. Lindvall received his MSc in Industrial Engineering and Management from the University of Linkoping, Sweden.
What are the cutting-edge products/services offered by your organization?
MultiTech is committed to supporting the growth and development of the Internet of Things (IoT) in order to create new customer experiences and unparalleled economic value while improving the quality of life for countless people throughout the world. By providing IoT products and services, MultiTech delivers deeper understanding to businesses, governments, organizations and individuals, which will, in turn, transform the way we live and work.
MultiTech offers a variety of embedded devices as well as gateways, routers, and modems that address connectivity across a variety of technologies including analog, Ethernet, cellular, PAN, and LPWA. Our diverse, award-winning portfolio reflects the constantly evolving world of the Internet of Things with a product and technology combination to suit virtually any use case.
Our data communication technology and devices are designed to ensure the quickest route to market-based on your needs, programming capabilities, preferred use of resources and business focus. The result is a faster return on investment and lower total cost of ownership for your IoT application.
Out latest industry-leading devices address the growing need for private enterprise networks in support of digital transformation by enabling LoRaWAN and Private LTE connections.
How has your organization sustained its market competency? What are the characteristics that set it apart?
Close relationships with our customers and partners are the key to staying ahead in the marketplace, particularly over the course of 50 years of technology transitions. We differentiate ourselves from other players with:
Superior Quality: From our US-based manufacturing plant to our countless product and process certifications, we’re committed to the utmost quality in everything we do. That’s why you can find more than 22 Million MultiTech products performing essential duties for businesses around the globe.
Service Excellence: From our comprehensive portfolio to the extensive reach of our distribution network, MultiTech is easy to choose and easy to buy. Thanks to in-house manufacturing and custom design services; broad-reaching expertise and fast, agile development we deliver customization and flexibility you simply can’t get anywhere else.
History of Innovation: From the earliest analog systems to the cellular heart of today’s industrial Internet of Things to the latest low-power wireless technology, MultiTech has consistently connected businesses in ways previously unimaginable – and has been doing so for 50 years. We have no intention of slowing down.
We’re continuing our legacy of firsts with innovative devices supporting edge intelligence, LPWA, Private LTE, and 5G.
Share your views on the latest trends in your industry. How are you keeping up with them?
Demand for robust and agile local connectivity with cost-efficient deployment architecture, paired with the need for secure, on-premise data management is driving the appetite for private enterprise networks to support digital transformation and the Internet of Things.
Pair that trend with the liberalization of mid-band spectrum policy in the US and abroad and we are facing a paradigm shift in the way cellular networks are deployed: from thousands of wireless operators to millions of sites with their own cellular network, including sports venues, airports, malls, hotels, mines, manufacturing facility, and enterprise office spaces.
Other important industry trends you’ll see us addressing this year and beyond including enhancing the computing power of our edge devices to support local decision making and optimize communications and cloud usage as well as supporting the most robust security for connected devices, particularly those used in critical infrastructure and other heavily-regulated industries.
MultiTech is among the first to commercialize routers to facilitate such deployments, building on our experience deploying private enterprise LoRaWAN networks.
How do you maintain a productive work culture at your company while motivating your employees?
We are committed to building a great team and inspiring them, making this a fun and satisfying place to work, and delivering success for them as individuals and for the organization.
It is inspiring to be part of this ever-changing, growing industry, which uses technology to solve important issues and to be a part of teams and organizations with great, creative people striving to deliver excellence.
Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learned that have shaped the journey of the company.
Getting something started is not easy, it’s a lot of work. But making it stay so that you’re viable year after year, you have to be willing to invest. That means you have to take time and talent of your own and others and make it so that you can sustain the “genes” you already had. Companies need somebody watching out for all that stuff to make sure the same energy is applied to sustaining that went into starting a business. If you put a process together, you have to make sure it is used on a daily basis. That way, as technology changes, you are prepared to move with it.
After the passing of our founder Raghu Sharma, the company had a few challenges keeping up the extraordinary pace of innovation and subsequent growth we experienced under his leadership. We went through a few leadership changes to tap back into our legacy of innovation and achieve, again, industry-leading growth.
What are your future plans for the company? Where do you see the company in the years to come?
You can continue to expect innovation focused on solving our customer’s biggest IoT pain points through a combination of product enhancements, targeted support services and tailored bundled solutions.
Visit www.multitech.com to know more.
Raghu Sharma | Founder | Stefan Lindvall | CEO ,MultiTech Systems
