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APRESENTAÇÃO > CASE STUDIES
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 At the World's EarsQuadriga has been developing applications for Nokia Communicator since 1997, and is said to be among four of the most dynamic companies in the world in this field.
www.quadriga.pt
Quadriga was founded in February of 1996. Valério Marques and Valério Marques, a father and son team, together decided to create a company linked to the management of fleets. Through a European magazine, they were able to contact a Dutch software house and from there a business emerged. With initial investments of 80 thousand euro, Quadriga came to be a distributor of applications for fleet control during 1996. Meanwhile, it was at the end of this year that some divergences began. TMN had already shown interest in certain applications, but the Marques began to realize that the Dutch company with whom they were working was not going to evolve in the direction of GSM. They preferred to maintain their concentration on satellites. It was then that the Marques' decided to invest in telecommunications and began work to develop their own solutions. They ended their representation the following year. In the beginning of 1997, the first sales to TMN took place. This was the turning point for the company. TMN suggested that Quadriga make a joint venture to develop applications for Nokia 9000. On a trip to London, during one of the meetings for Nokia developers, the Quadriga people made their first contacts. That moment led to the development of applications for Communicator. We were the only ones in southern Europe developing software for this mobile phone company for a long time" recalls Valério Marques. Today, and despite there being more companies in the business, the founder of Quadriga has little doubt: "In this area, we are one of four of the most dynamic companies in the world, on par with Teamware from Finland, PCS Innovations from Canada and Yellow from Germany". BES.com recently invested in Quadriga with an injection of capital in the amount of 2 million Euro, levied over three years, in exchange for a transfer of approximately 27% of the company's capital stock, which will become at the end of the fourth year about 35%, depending on the profile of the company during that period of time. Above 100 per cent growth
Quadriga entered 2002 ready for new challenges and with several projects up its sleeve. As well as the contract celebrated with Optimus in effect since 2001 for tracking fleets by means of GSM, Quadriga already has a wide range of products for GSM operators, aimed at WAP, GPRS and UMTS clients. The rise in the use of SMS services was felt around the world and Quadriga, who had invested in this technology early on, has made its mark not only in the Portuguese market, where it works with the 3 operators, but also at international level. The SMS Pet, a virtual pet that feeds on SMS is a clear example of Quadriga's business initiative and creativity.
While developing SMS products and services, Quadriga includes in its portfolio about 20 WAP environment games, some of them already made available to customers by international operators, as is the case with Telefónica and Wind, the number 2 Italian operator. Another area where Quadriga has decided to blaze the trail is business applications. For the sake of example, Valério Marques points out 3 projects in which Quadriga developed mobile solutions on request by their customers: an application was developed for Império/Bonança for the Nokia 9210 telephone permitting insurance agents to run simulations using a connection to the company server by SMS. There, the message would be interpreted by another Quadriga application, Proxima, which in its turn would activate the simulation. Another of the projects of reference is the one developed for NetSaúde. The project named Netmédico aims to equip several thousand member doctors with a Nokia 9210 telephone and a Quadriga application. This application allows doctors to access patients' medical files and includes a permanent database with subscribing doctors, patients, different medication and their constitution. It can also carry out a comparison between the different drugs based on their composition. The third business application referred to by the president of Quadriga was developed for Eurotax, the European leader for rates on 2nd hand cars. This application, also developed for the Nokia 9210 telephone, allows car salesmen and other professionals of this sector to determine the value of a determined vehicle by SMS. The user is guided along intuitive menus, using a database with over 9000 entries, until reaching the final description of the vehicle in question. Once again the request is sent by SMS to the central database, interpreted by Proxima and returned in a user-friendly format to the user with the vehicle's quotation, the buying and the selling price. At the close of last year, the company's total turnover came to approximately 1,8 million Euros, corresponding to a growth of over 140% in relation to the previous year. QUADRIGA - Telemática e Comunicações, S.A. |
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