Field, Fleet Companies Attract Funding And Accolades
By Brian Albright, Field Technologies
A couple of relatively young field service companies have won some community accolades recently, reinforcing both the importance of tech companies in local economies and the importance of field service in the overall economy. These companies are also attracting a significant amount of venture capital as field service continues to prove itself an important profit center.
MobileLogix is among the 16 finalists for the 2017 Venture Madness business competition organized by Invest Southwest and the Arizona Commerce Authority. The finalists are competing for a chance to share from a pool of a $20,000 cash prize and $300,000 in potential investment dollars from local groups.
The finalists will compete in a live challenge on March 8 in Scottsdale, Ariz.
The Glendale-based company also raised $2.2 million in Series A funding recently. CEO and founder Ron Babich said he hopes to reach $50 million in revenue within four years. The company has 14 enterprise customers and 2,700 users.
MobileLogix offers a mobile app for field service and sales. The company's SmartField platform can, according to the company, increase revenue by 34 percent and reduce costs by more than 16 percent by eliminating wait times. The company offers solutions for the cable industry, healthcare, construction, home services, oil services, and property management.
Last year the company announced an integration with SAP's HANA cloud platform, which will allow for IoT integration, field sensor monitoring, and the analysis and storage of field sensor data. The company also offers an API so that technicians can send and receive real-time video in the field via Google Glass devices.
ThingTech, an Internet of Things (IoT) and fleet management platform provider based in Atlanta, was named to Venture Atlanta's "Five Startups to Watch in 2017" list.
“We are pleased and excited to be recognized as one of the 5 Atlanta Startups to Watch," said Tim Quinn, ThingTech's CEO. "The Atlanta startup ecosystem has written quite a few success stories and we look forward to continuing the upward trajectory started by prior winners of this award, like SalesLoft and Predikto. Due to the tireless efforts of the entire ThingTech team and our awesome customers, our growing company is now poised for exceptional growth in 2017 and beyond.”
The company targets field service applications, as well as transportation, government, public transit and construction, and its solutions are in use with the State of Delaware and the Atlanta Regional Commission.
Jonathan Green, a grass seed distributor, is using the platform for routing optimization for its fleet of trucks. The company is also providing a fleet/asset management solution for the city of Burleson, Texas, that is expected to improve driver safety and reduce idling, improve capital budgeting, and enable predictive analytics to reduce asset downtime.
ThingTech uses CalAmp Connect's platform to power its fleet management solutions. The solution enables cloud-based asset optimization.
In other funding news, Charlotte-based MapAnything completed a $33.1 million Series B round of financing. The company's solutions provide a visual mapping interface to Salesforce data. Salesforce Ventures participated in the round, as did ServiceNow Ventures.