Over the past 6 years, our product has grown significantly, much larger than any of us could have ever imagined when we started our great adventure of “Automating the world’s logistics operations”. Our product has grown so huge that even we, Team VersaFleet, keep struggling to clarify concepts, terms and the product features we were presenting to the market. It caused miscommunication and misalignment with everyone — customers, potential leads, even within our team! We would spend hours in meetings and discussions, trying to find the right words to explain the concept of ‘enhancements’ and to find the right vocabulary for our new product offerings. We were, quite admittedly, simply lost in confusion.
After a long struggle, we decided to take a deep breath and slowly re-evaluate our brand, asking ourselves difficult questions of how we can communicate our products effectively to our customers. How can we continue to grow and scale without adding more confusion? More importantly, how can we elevate the quality of our brand experience?
Why we rebranded, Why now?
Taking a step back, we discovered 3 main problems contributing to our brand “confusion”:
- Market Expansion
The VersaFleet™ TMS is now available in many different markets, including Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines. The product will soon be available in Thailand, Vietnam, and even India.
We wanted to expand and reposition our brand to fit these new markets, and to address the new industries that we were serving. - Product Growth
Simply put, our product (or rather, our suite of products) had outgrown what our brand represented. - Brand Misalignment
We were painfully aware that our brand was not targeting our desired target market in an appealing way.
1. Market Expansion
Supply chains are not a straightforward industry, as we quickly discovered. They involve a web of inter-connected businesses and processes operating at varying scales, in different industries across geographies. With advancements in the supply chain technologies, businesses have ever-changing demands and complexities.
While the VersaFleet TMS was originally built for logistics service providers (transporters), many goods and consumer brands (FMCG & CPG), manufacturers and distributors soon joined our growing customer base. They too, were in need of Transport Management Software to automate, optimise and enhance their supply chain operations.
To include our new customers in our product enhancements & messaging, we decided to dedicate time to deeply understand our new customers’ personas, and how operations work in their large, sprawling geographies.
2. Product Growth
We are constantly improving our products, adding new features, enhancing customer and user experiences. Our product has grown in so many ways in the past 6 years: from a single product to various interdependent products, for various types of users. Naturally, we were also coming up with new & funky content to differentiate ourselves from incumbents in the market.
We enjoyed Versa-fying everything, and we mean everything. It was VersaJobs before it became MyJobs, VersaTrack before VersaFleet Tracking, we called ourselves “VersaTeam” and our pantry was fondly called “VersaFood”. And we worked at the Versa-ffice.
This led to a genuine struggle to explain the relationship between our various products. People asked “Are these separate products that you are selling? Or are these different modules in a product?” It also made it difficult to explain product enhancements and we asked ourselves how to label even tiny micro-features. It was becoming a nightmare to maintain brand identities across multiple products and services, while maintaining consistency & brand unity.
We were confused.
After much discussions, we have now decided to rename all products to fall under the VersaFleet umbrella – Command, Plan, Drive, Demand and Track.
3. Brand Realignment
Our name ‘VersaFleet’ itself has posed many baffling first impressions. We have had to offer these awkward answers numerous times:
“No sir, we do not have a fleet to help you with your logistics needs.”
“No ma’am, we do not install hardware to track your vehicle assets – we have trusted partners who can do that for you.”
This was our desired product messaging: The VersaFleet Transport Management Software (TMS) automates supply chains with software to optimise delivery/pick up orders and manage the transportation of goods.
After lengthy discussions (yes, we did consider calling ourselves “Versa” – thank you for suggesting it!), we’ve decided to keep to our familiar and good ‘ole name, VersaFleet.
Amidst all this, we wish to reassure you that our founding vision and mission has not changed. We, the VersaFleet team, still firmly believe that all transporters should be enabled & empowered by innovative technology that is easy to live with.
Out with the Old, In with the New
While realigning our brand, we came to the difficult decision to change our logo completely and start anew.
We sincerely hope that you will like it as much as we do.
We’d also like to announce a new logo icon that will be accompanying our new logo. It represents our goal to provide visibility and guide the digitalisation journey of our customers’ supply chain advancements. The VersaFleet wordmark represent ourselves as a young and modern tech company. If you’re interested to know more about the redesign, keep a look out for our blog post next week!
The VersaFleet brand was already going through a steady phase of subtle ‘brand refresh’ exercises these past few years. We hope to provide a more vibrant experience for all our customers, new and old. As you might have noticed, VersaFleet suddenly seemed brighter for awhile. You may have required shades 😎.
Most of our rebranding process took place in a series of remote workshops and interviews (100% digital with a virtual whiteboards!!!). It involved various stakeholders, from our own internal team, customers, as well as shareholders. We can’t thank everyone enough for bearing with us patiently throughout this process and providing your valuable inputs.
In the coming months, look out for more changes to come! Our newly refreshed website and blog is one of them (Psst…hint hint 😉 you’re looking at it!). We will also be rolling out the new brand to all VersaFleetTM products so look out for it.
Take a leap & embark on a never ending digitalisation journey with us.
Yours truly,
Team VersaFleet
