Keeping track of a growing business success

The Leeds-based business agreed the five-year deal with the European giant after a successful three-month trial.

Martin Port, the managing director, said: "It reinforces our position as the UK market leader in providing tracking systems to the electricity, gas, water and telecoms market. It also gives us the opportunity to provide solutions in other countries."

In another development, the business is preparing to launch its Three X mobile software service in Europe this September. It also expects to unveil its smartphone application for customers in the next week.

Mr Port said: "We are setting the pace for the technology and it's all coming from Yorkshire."

The business provides real-time and historic data to help companies manage drivers and service engineers to become more efficient, drive down costs and improve customer service.

It also helps companies reduce vehicle speed, which, in turn, helps them become more fuel efficient and have fewer accidents and fines.

"Our whole vision is to help people save money," said Mr Port. He added that by 2012, he hopes to save his customers 200m a year.

Masternaut Three X has 160 employees. It turns over about 22m and this year is on target for operating profits of more than 2m.

Mr Port bought the UK licence to Masternaut from a company in France in 2002 and built up the business before selling it back to the French in November 2009.

Most of the hardware is developed in France, but the software is developed in the UK by a team of 30 who provide tailored services for UK needs.

The plan for the group is to increase its vehicle tracking base from 130,000 vehicles – believed to be the largest in Europe – to one million over the next five years.

In the UK, Mr Port wants to double the size of the business to 50m. He said: "We plan to get there through joined up, end-to-end solutions.

"We can provide a company with a back office, accounting, customer relationship management system based on Microsoft technology.

"We can then integrate that with vehicle tracking and mobile work-flow applications which essentially help companies do away with paperwork."

The service is already provided to Yorkshire companies such as Arnold Laver, Heron Foods, Rix Petroleum and AMX.

It helps reduce the amount of time waiting for cash to come in and allows users to book jobs faster and complete work more efficiently, said Mr Port.

He added: "We believe by having all these solutions, with a bigger focus on medium to larger customer, we can demonstrate huge growth. The SME customer is important to us, but is not our primary focus.

"Our focus is shifting because in this climate, companies are even more cost conscious. Tracking for bigger companies is going to be inevitable, rather than an option."

He expects his UK tracking base to hit 85,000 this year. While the number of tracked vehicles is about 400,000, the market opportunity stands at around 1.5m vehicles.

"It's not just about selling a tracking unit, it's also about capturing data and sending it back and forth. In the future, I believe that all work that operatives do on the road will be captured electronically. There will be very few cases of people writing on paper."

Mr Port, 47, said his success as an entrepreneur is partly driven by his wife, Amanda, who looks after marketing.

He said: "We work for the benefit of our family. We don't work for ego or for what we get individually and we want to be charitable as well.

"It's important to have somebody who helps you keep your feet on the ground and shares your vision."

They owned 40 per cent of the company and were the main shareholders. The deal to sell the business resulted in a "substantial" payout for the Ports.

Mr Port can achieve "an even bigger gain" if he hits performance targets.

Private investors from Leeds and overseas who backed the business back in 2002 received a return of 1,000 per cent on their money, he added.

People you know are the best bet

Anybody who is setting up a business from scratch will be far better off using people they know as backers rather than venture capital companies, according to Martin Port.

"The less you are reliant on a bank for finance, the better, even if it means giving away more shares for cash," he added. "At least the money is invested in the business."

Mr Port's first venture was selling pretzels in New York when he was 24. He returned to UK and established a successful bakery business.

He sold Masternaut Three X to Hub Telecom, a subsidiary of Aeroports de Paris, Europe's second largest airports operator, in 2009.

He said: "I still feel I own the business. You make it your own. My drive and ambition are still the same. I look at how I am doing against the plan, and that drives me on."