HERE Technologies helps
Crave InfoTech drive its
innovation imperative.
Brought to you by HERE Technologies

Innovation is the new business imperative, but it’s certainly not a guarantee of success, particularly in the tech sector.
New technology products experience failure rates significantly higher than in virtually any other industry. Rapidly
evolving customer needs and expectations require tech providers to be agile, to anticipate demands and hit analways-moving target. Innovation, then, is an ongoing resource and expertise-consuming journey. It demands that all butthe largest companies establish an ecosystem of technology partners with capabilities and innovation agendas thatcomplement their own.
Much of today’s technological innovation focuses on helping organizations improve operational efficiency. We’re well into
an era of automation, its value on the factory and warehouse floor established, certainly. But manufacturing,distribution, utility, retail and other asset and supply chain-intensive businesses are now seeking efficiencies beyond
what automation can deliver, efficiencies that can only be realized through broader use of disruptive technologies.
As the concept of digital transformation gained momentum in the marketplace, Crave InfoTech responded by innovating.
Its Co-Founder and CEO, Shrikant Nistane, led an initiative to extend the company’s traditional value proposition –providing digital apps that augment the SAP ERP solution - to taking on a role as its customers’ partner in digitaltransformation. Crave InfoTech’s business remains SAP- and app-development focused. That said, company developers
are now utilizing disruptive technologies, like real-time location and location intelligence in those apps, most notably
those designed to improve asset tracking, enterprise asset management and warehouse management.

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The next frontier in operational efficiency

Nistane believes an increasing number of organizations view real-time indoor and outdoor location tracking as the next
frontier in operational efficiency. “Most large organizations in manufacturing, utilities, retail and distribution use ERP, but
now they want to utilize real-time location, geo-positioning and mapping solutions, especially in the supply chain andwarehouse operations side,” he says.
He saw opportunity in his customers’ appetite for more sophisticated capabilities, but he recognized they weren’tinterested in technology for technology’s sake. It would fall to Crave InfoTech to build solutions around thosetechnologies and demonstrate how the solutions would impact their core business. “I see my role as aligning thiscompany with all the changes in the technology marketplace, building innovation into our DNA and staying one stepahead of what customers are looking for,” Nistane says.
However, with a staff of approximately 100 people, he’d need access to outside resources to help Crave InfoTech
anticipate and outpace market demands. “We’re always looking for companies at the cutting-edge of technology, whohave a solid roadmap for innovation and who can work with us on go-to-market strategy,” Nistane says, pointing to hiscompany’s association with HERE Technologies as a classic example of such a partnership.
“We were looking for agility and needed access to location, mapping, routing and geospatial APIs. Our developers workedwith HERE to integrate their geospatial and mapping technology with SAP ERP and handheld hardware technology fromZebra Technology. That’s how we got started on our product journey, developing our tracking and transportationsolutions.”3

Innovating withHERE“Our customers are looking for end-to-end solutions, nothing siloed, nothing that solves only part of the problem,”
Nistane says, pointing out that small and mid-size technology companies, like Crave InfoTech, can only do so much. “Sopartners like HERE Technology enable us to combine our innovation with theirs to provide that end-to-end solution.”
He provides a real-world example of a Crave InfoTech customer seeking to optimize the movements of over 100 forklifts
operating in a four-football-stadium-sized warehouse. GPS technology doesn’t work indoors and narrow aisles or stairs
make some areas in a warehouse inaccessible to forklifts. That’s where HERE’s indoor mapping solution comes into play.
“We can put that information into the routing algorithm for the indoor map and we integrate it with our warehousemanagement app. That allows us to correlate transactions coming from SAP with HERE’s indoor routing and movement
data from Zebra mobile hardware devices. We delivered an end-to-end solution that tracks forklifts in real-time andensures they’re utilized at maximum efficiency.”
Crave InfoTech continually works very closely with HERE Technology’s go-to-market team to expose HERE APIs in its effort
to strengthen existing applications and develop new ones. For instance, the company’s Connected Assets and IoTapplication leverages HERE Technologies APIs for fixed asset maintenance and route planning for moving assets, likecommercial vehicles.
“For the commercial vehicles, it’s important to understand things like the weight capacity of the road, bridge heights oreven if a large truck is allowed on a specific street,” Nistane says. Using HERE APIs Crave InfoTech combines geospatial
and routing parameters with business parameters, like the priority of the shipment, the destination location for thedelivery, the customer, and the urgency of the load to create a solution its customers can use for routing commercial
vehicles.
Crave InfoTech customers utilize that same solution to schedule and perform maintenance on any other assets. “Westarted with an application for tracking vehicles and transformed it into tracking every type of asset. We collect andanalyze performance data to provide meaningful decision-making intelligence for managers and maintenancetechnicians in the field,” he says. “So location intelligence and location data are important not just for tracking moving
assets but for coordinating maintenance on enterprise assets as well - making sure technicians are in the right location
at the right time. We have a large equipment focus that requires we use maps effectively.”“The capabilities HERE delivers have become the backbone of our offerings,” Nistane says. “We continue to work together
on co-marketing initiatives and utilize each other’s strengths, reaching out to the right customer at the right time. Largeorganizations are hungry for real-time location and geo-positioning solutions, especially in the supply chain andoperations side, so our partnership with HERE is critical now and as we continue to innovate in the future.”
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4About HERE Technologies
HERE, the Open Location Platform company, enables people, enterprises and cities to harness the power oflocation. By making sense of the world through the lens of location we empower our customers to achieve
better outcomes – from helping a city manage its infrastructure or an enterprise optimize its assets to guiding
drivers to their destination safely. To learn more about HERE, including our new generation of cloud-based
location platform services, visit 360.here.com and here.com© 2019 HERE | here.com