On September 30th, 2020, workforce expense vendor Motus announced the acquisition of Vision Wireless, a wireless expense management company based in Augusta, Georgia in the United States. This purchase demonstrates Motus’ continued focus in enterprise mobility to add to its September 2019 purchase of Wireless Analytics.
Vision Wireless was founded in 2003 with a focus on wireless expense management and managed mobility services provided to Fortune 1000 and mid-sized enterprises. In recent years, Vision Wireless has taken a greater role in providing thought leadership to the industry at large, including its recent sponsorship of Amalgam Insights’ Technology Expense Management Expo.
Over the past decade, I’ve typically recommended Vision Wireless as an appropriate vendor for North American-based organizations over $1 billion in revenue. Vision Wireless is known for its strong managed service capabilities with white-glove service and a software solution that supports integration with a variety of accounts payable, general ledger, procurement, IT service management, human resources, and mobile device management solutions. Vision Wireless was also working on increasing its automation, self-service, and integration capabilities.
With the acquisition by Motus, Amalgam Insights expects that Vision Wireless’ platform development will accelerate to support Motus’ ambitions of becoming a full-service remote worker solution. Over the past year, Motus has brought its Fixed and Variable Rate methodology to mobile devices to help companies support Total Cost of Ownership and expense analysis across both business and personal (Bring Your Own Device) use cases.
What’s Next?
Vision Wireless customers should expect to see no significant changes in their support in the immediate future. Motus acquired Vision Wireless in no small part to acquire the quality and depth of service that Vision Wireless has provided to its clients for years. At the same time, Vision Wireless customers should also be aware that Motus also has a fleet management solution for organizations that conduct business activities with personal vehicles. For companies seeking to improve their remote worker expense management, this Motus solution may be an opportunity to help support both current working conditions as well as a post-COVID future that maintains a significant remote worker population.
Motus customers gain a high-quality mobility support and managed services team with experience supporting clients such as Aramark, ServiceMaster, and CVS Health. This acquisition will ease Motus’ ability to support integration with a variety of software solutions and platforms, such as ServiceNow, SAP Ariba, Coupa, and leading ERP solutions.
Amalgam Insights is also interested to see how this acquisition affects the market for remaining high-quality managed mobility services and wireless expense solutions that we track such as Advantix, GoExceed, ICOMM, Intratem, mindWireless, Mobichord, MobilSense, Mobile Solutions, Valicom, and vMox.
In the long term, as cars become increasingly connected, the Internet of Things become ubiquitous, and the need for remote mobility support only becomes greater over time, Amalgam Insights believes that Vision Wireless’ long-time expertise in supporting enterprise mobility support will prove to be a strong asset for Motus. Amalgam Insights also believes that this is not the end of Motus’ acquisition streak, as a Thoma Bravo portfolio company. For Motus to fully unleash its potential as a remote worker reimbursement vendor, Amalgam Insights believes that there is still room for Motus to expand into cloud management, security, home office expenses, and other business categories that are split between corporate and personal responsibilities.
Overall, Amalgam Insights believes that this acquisition represents a strong commitment by Motus to continue expanding its support of enterprise mobility, an acquisition of a strong enterprise client case, and an opportunity to use Vision Wireless’ managed services foundation and platform to help expand its remote work support. This acquisition is indicative of what should be happening in the wireless and telecom expense market: accretive acquisition to support a bigger picture, such as the future of remote work management, the future of IT management, and the future of employee management. Expect more acquisitions like this in the near future.