PhillyTechNews Daily Page 5/31:





Investment Roundup: USA Technologies, SimpleTire, BrightView Holdings, Safeguard Scientifics

Tom Paine




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Shares of Malvern-based USA Technologies Inc. (USAT) broke into a new 52-week high last Tuesday, hitting a peak of $14.00, following the company's announcement of the pricing of a public offering. It generated gross proceeds of $75.7 million.

USAT now has a market cap of $723 million. USA Technologies fiscal third-quarter revenue was $35.8 million, up 35% year over year, though much of that growth could be attributed to its acquisition of Canteloupe Systems. Full year fiscal 2018 revenue is expected to be between $138 million to $142.

USAT spent a period of several years without much momentum, with the market not ready for its technology. I remember a time when it was practically begging for more capital. It provides a digital payment option to vending machines and other remote devices. If the size of this market is large enough, then it will be a good candidate to be snapped up by a bigger player.

I've used USAT technology in a couple of places, and it seems to work well.




SimpleTire, the Bensalem-based online tire site, received what was termed a "significant investment" from Cleveland-based Dealertire LLC . SimpleTire is a six-year-old startup that links existing tire dealers into a nationwide e-commerce platform.

Brothers Andy and Josh Chalofsky developed the concept for SimpleTire while working in their family's traditional tire store, along with their business partner Kenny Pratt. The three founders will continue to lead the company. SimpleTire is expected to exceed $500 million in annual sales for 2018.




KKR-backed BrightView Holdings, based in Plymouth Meeting, the largest provider of commercial landscaping services in the US, filed today for an IPO for up to $100 million , although it could eventually reach $500 million according to some analysts.




3M Ventures, the venture capital arm of 3M Co., was among big-name companies to participate in a $20 million round of funding for Madison, Wisconsin-based health tech company Propeller Health.

Safeguard Scientifics was also a return investor. Propeller Health makes software designed to help patients better manage asthma, COPD and other respiratory diseases.


Daily Page 5/30: Comcast to try selling movie tickets through X1; Bensalem's SimpleTire receives "significant investment"














PhillyTechNews Daily Page 5/30: Universal Display Stock Jumps On Apple iPhone Report; Salesforce up after results, forecast



Drawing the Future of Shopping With Michael Rubin (Wall Street Journal)




PhillyTechNews Daily Page 5/26




PhillyTechNews Daily Page 5/25: Atlantic City Apple store shutting down; Charter accuses New York Attorney General of conspiring with 'cabal' of Tim Wu, Netflix and Google;










You probably didn't know Atlantic City had an Apple store.




PhillyTech People News 5/25: Amazon clothing exec takes helm at QVC's Zulily; NBC exec will co-manage TV at Amazon

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PhillyTechNews Dally Page 5/24: Microsoft and Publicis double down on AI, enterprise and cloud services; the end of StumbleUpon.



PhillyTechNews Daily Page 5/23: Health IT Summit in Philadelphia discusses Blockchain; Verizon Drops Plan to Build its Own OTT TV Service




Concentra Analytics, UK enterprise SaaS company with US base in Philly, gets $56.4 million investment

Tom Paine




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Companies such as SAP and Qlik both started US units around Philly when they were still relatively small outfits from Europe. Now another young, promising import with deep funding is growing in Philly.

Concentra Analytics, a London-based SaaS and data analytics company, attracted a $56.4 million investment led by One Peak Partners , with paticipation from Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital and others. Concentra’s flagship product, OrgVue, is a leading solution for HR analytics, organisation design and workforce planning.

Concentra's US base is in Philadelphia, with offices at 1600 Market Street. According to LinkedIn, it appears to have about 10 employees based here (out of 170 globally). Russ Clarke is President, North America for Concentra OrgVue.

Concentra says revenue would be around 20 million pounds ($27 million) this year, up from 8.3 million pounds two years ago.

A major planned use of the new capital is international expansion.

“We’ve been cautious to date and that was prudent,” Concentra founder & CEO Rupert Morrison told Reuters. “But we’ve proved that we can make a profit, we’ve proved that we can scale and grow and have a world beating product, and now is the time to try and grab the market as fast as possible.”


PhillyTechNews Daily Page 5/20: Happy #ClinicalTrialsDay, Comcast still plotting v Disney for Fox




Sungard AS sells Assurance software business to Atlanta PE firm

Tom Paine




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Sungard Availability Services (Sungard AS), Wayne, has sold its Assurance Business Continuity Management Planning (BCMP) software business to an Atlanta private equity investor, Resurgens Technology Partners.

Sungard originally acquired the businesss, then known as Strohl Systems , in 2008. During its ownership Sungard helped Strohl convert from an on-premise product to being a completely SaaS-based solution. Assurance helps customers plan for recovering from major business disruptions. Sungard apparently wants to focus on offering availability services rather than software.

Assurance Software will remain in Wayne, while emphasizing strengthening partnerships with companies including Sungard AS and Dell Boomi.

Sungard Availability was spun off from SunGard Data Systems in 2004. At that time it had about $1.4 billion in revenue and was transitioning to supporting cloud environments. However, since the spinoff Sungard AS has not made much financial information available publicly.



PhillyTechNews Daily Page 5/18: Trump said to have pushed his postmaster general to double rate on Amazon; ZTE: management changes may win a reprieve from U.S. sanctions





"There is clearly the potential to triple the value of this company. We believe that is only a matter of time," McDermott told investors


PhilllyTechNews Daily Page 5/17: FanDuel in talks to be acquired; VA signs contract with Cerner for an electronic health record system

SAP exec on company's mindfulness courses: “This is no hippy-dippy stuff.”

Statement by Acting Secretary Robert Wilkie
VA signs contract with Cerner for an electronic health record system






Veeva Introduces Next-Generation Commercial Data Warehouse for Life Sciences


Veeva Introduces Next-Generation Commercial Data Warehouse for Life Sciences

Veeva Nitro eliminates the time and effort of custom data warehouse development and maintenance with new industry-specific cloud solution

PHILADELPHIA — 2018 Veeva Commercial & Medical Summit — May 15, 2018 — Veeva Systems (NYSE:VEEV) today introduced a new commercial data warehouse for life sciences. Veeva Nitro eliminates the burden of custom-built data warehouses with an industry-specific data model and standard integrations that unify companies’ most important data sources. Now the life sciences industry will have a ready-to-use commercial data warehouse in the cloud that is tailored to its needs with the ease of implementation, configuration, and ongoing enhancements that come with a packaged software solution. With Veeva Nitro, the industry will finally have the right commercial data foundation for artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics to deliver business insights faster.

“Custom data warehouses are inherently inflexible, so it can take weeks to get answers to important questions every time a new data source is added or systems change,” said Dan Utzinger, vice president and CIO at Intra-Cellular Therapies, and former VP of IT at Eisai. “An industry-specific commercial data warehouse in the cloud provides a significant opportunity to accelerate speed to value by delivering actionable insights for better decision-making, as well as lay the foundation to fully leverage the power of advanced analytics and AI.”

Because of the lack of a high-quality, packaged commercial data warehouse solution, companies build and maintain their own, requiring significant time and resources. These custom-built solutions are not quickly adaptable as business requirements evolve and data structures and sources change. This delays insights from reaching the business and leaves organizations ill-equipped to support AI.

“A packaged commercial data warehouse in the cloud has the potential to be a game changer for life sciences,” said Eric Newmark, program vice president for IDC’s cloud, SaaS, and industry cloud practice. “It’s encouraging to see the next evolution of industry cloud software will include a data warehouse built for life sciences in an effort to finally make custom data warehouses the exception, not the rule.”

Veeva Nitro is a global solution that meets organizations’ unique regional requirements, including specialized data sources and business processes. Its extensible data model is based on deep industry best practices, while seamless integration with Veeva CRM Suite and Veeva Vault PromoMats automatically syncs all customer activity data and information about a company’s content and its usage into the data warehouse. Also, industry data connectors are capable of bringing together data from the most common sources such as prescription, sales, formulary, and claims data, including regional data from IQVIA and Encise.

Veeva Nitro is analytics-ready so companies can get business insights faster. Customers have the flexibility to use the business intelligence (BI) and AI tools of their choice, as well as deliver tailored data visualization to field teams through Veeva CRM MyInsights to immediately generate insights and drive informed action.

“Veeva aims to eliminate the burden of custom-built data warehouses to help customers execute with much greater speed and agility,” said Peter Gassner, Veeva CEO and founder. “Veeva Nitro will bring the right data together so customers can uncover insights that were never before possible and enable intelligent customer engagement.”

Veeva Nitro is built on Amazon Redshift — a powerful petabyte-scale data warehouse infrastructure in the cloud — to ensure the highest levels of scalability and fast-query performance even on the largest data sets.

In other news today, Veeva announced new mobile innovations in Veeva CRM to empower field teams with the right information they need from any device. Read our press release to learn how Veeva CRM’s new real-time architecture and Sunrise user interface improve field execution and productivity.

Veeva Nitro is available today in Japan, and is expected to be available in North America at the end of 2018. Learn more at veeva.com/Nitro.

What the Industry is Saying About Veeva Nitro:

“The current explosion of data comes as a double-edged sword. It can offer customer insights in ways that were never before possible, but it can also overwhelm and frustrate organizations that are not equipped to harness it,” said David Ehrlich, president and CEO of Aktana. “Veeva Nitro will modernize data warehousing and establish a flexible cloud foundation that enables Aktana to better anticipate and serve the decision support needs of our customers.”

“Increasing data’s availability and reliability enhances analytics’ value in driving more opportunities. Combining Veeva Nitro with Qlik’s associative engine will enhance life sciences’ ability to execute at a higher level across the organization and in the field through analytics,” said Mike Potter, CTO at Qlik. “As a longtime Veeva partner, we’re excited about the tremendous potential of Veeva Nitro to help life sciences customers derive more insights and outcomes from their data.”

“Life sciences companies are challenged to address data sourced from increasingly diverse, disparate, and rapidly changing sources”, said Mark Jewett, vice president of product marketing at Tableau Software. “Veeva’s new industry-specific data warehouse paired with visual analytics from Tableau will help pharma companies manage the variety and volume of their data and keep pace with their business.”

Additional Information
For more on Veeva Nitro, visit: veeva.com/Nitro
Connect with Veeva on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/veeva-systems
Follow @veevasystems on Twitter: twitter.com/veevasystems
Like Veeva on Facebook: facebook.com/veevasystems

About Veeva Systems
Veeva Systems Inc. is a leader in cloud-based software for the global life sciences industry. Committed to innovation, product excellence, and customer success, Veeva has more than 600 customers, ranging from the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies to emerging biotechs. Veeva is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, with offices in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. For more information, visit veeva.com.

Forward-looking Statements
This release contains forward-looking statements, including the market demand for and acceptance of Veeva’s products and services, the results from use of Veeva’s products and services, and general business conditions, particularly in the life sciences industry. Any forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based upon Veeva’s historical performance and its current plans, estimates, and expectations, and are not a representation that such plans, estimates, or expectations will be achieved. These forward-looking statements represent Veeva’s expectations as of the date of this press announcement. Subsequent events may cause these expectations to change, and Veeva disclaims any obligation to update the forward-looking statements in the future. These forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially. Additional risks and uncertainties that could affect Veeva’s financial results are included under the captions, “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations,” in the company’s filing on Form 10-K for the period ended January 31, 2018. This is available on the company’s website at veeva.com under the Investors section and on the SEC’s website at sec.gov. Further information on potential risks that could affect actual results will be included in other filings Veeva makes with the SEC from time to time.

###

Contact:
Roger Villareal
Veeva Systems
925-264-8885
roger.villareal@veeva.com

Lisa Barbadora
Veeva Systems
610-420-3413
pr@veeva.com







About Veeva Systems

Veeva Systems Inc. is a leader in cloud-based software for the global life sciences industry. Committed to innovation, product excellence, and customer success, Veeva has more than 600 customers, ranging from the world's largest pharmaceutical companies to emerging biotechs. Veeva is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, with offices in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.


Veeva Systems - Cloud-based Software for the Global Life Sciences Industry | © Copyright 2018 Veeva Systems | Privacy Statement | Terms




Clinical Ink To Accelerate Innovation And Growth With Major Investment By NovaQuest Private Equity


Clinical Ink To Accelerate Innovation And Growth With Major Investment By NovaQuest Private Equity
-- NovaQuest Private Equity acquires majority interest in Clinical Ink; Silicon Valley Bank provides new credit facility; RTI International, a leading research institute, also provided a strategic co-investment --

NEWS PROVIDED BY
NovaQuest Capital Management, L.L.C.
May 14, 2018, 18:01 ET
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PHILADELPHIA and RALEIGH, N.C. and WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., May 14, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Clinical Ink, the pioneering provider of eSource and next-generation ePRO/eCOA solutions for clinical development, today announced that the private equity team at NovaQuest Capital Management, L.L.C. ("NovaQuest") has acquired a majority of the outstanding shares of the company from existing investors and provided a substantial infusion of additional growth capital. The deep clinical, operational, and financial resources of NovaQuest will allow Clinical Ink to aggressively pursue growth opportunities and fuel investment in new products and operational capabilities.

"The pharmaceutical industry is anxiously seeking technology solutions that reduce costs and simplify clinical trials for patients, sites, sponsors and CROs," said Ed Seguine, CEO of Clinical Ink. "Clinical Ink's new partnership with NovaQuest is a testament to our strong financial performance and validation of our approach to provide a better clinical trial experience. The landscape of emerging clinical technology companies is littered with unrealized potential and we now have the resources, expertise, and relationships to successfully compete with the entrenched legacy providers to establish a new business model for conducting clinical trials."

"Clinical Ink is uniquely positioned to address the most challenging problems associated with conducting clinical trials," said Michael Sorensen, Partner at NovaQuest. "NovaQuest's experience directly funding major clinical programs with the world's largest pharmaceutical companies affords us deep insights into the opportunities to fundamentally improve this complex process. The Clinical Ink management team has achieved notable success and the company is at a critical inflection point where NovaQuest's expertise and relationships can help the company accelerate growth and continue to innovate."

RTI International, a leading research institute, provide strategic co-investment in support of Clinical Ink, to help solve the problem of reducing the cost and complexity of clinical research for sites, sponsors and patients. "We are excited to be a co-investment partner with NovaQuest and extend our healthcare and life sciences expertise to Clinical Ink," said Matt Jenkins, vice president and head of corporate development at RTI. "This deal fits well with our philosophy of investing alongside strong management teams and investment partners in high growth markets with a connection to our core research work and mission."

In a related transaction, Silicon Valley Bank also provided a flexible credit facility to Clinical Ink.

Baird served as exclusive financial advisor to Clinical Ink while Hogan Lovells provided the company legal advice. Wyrick Robbins provided legal advice to NovaQuest.

About Clinical Ink
Founded in 2007, Clinical Ink is dedicated to transforming clinical development with innovative technologies that make clinical research easier for patients, sites and sponsors. Clinical Ink's SureSource® platform directly captures eSource, ePRO, and eCOA data and documents and facilitates risk-based monitoring. Our approach puts the focus on protocol execution by focusing on the critical moments that matter. Clinical Ink maintains offices in Winston-Salem, NC and Philadelphia, PA. Find more at www.clinicalink.com.

About NovaQuest Capital Management, L.L.C.
NovaQuest Capital Management is a leading investor in life sciences and healthcare through its Product Finance and Private Equity strategies. NovaQuest was formed in 2000 with the vision of building an investment platform to provide strategic capital to life sciences and healthcare companies. Today, NovaQuest Capital Management manages over $1.8 billion through its Product Finance and Private Equity strategies. The investment team consists of highly seasoned operational and investment professionals with significant investment experience and deep life science and healthcare expertise. Furthermore, NovaQuest benefits from an extensive network of industry experts and relationships that assist in identifying, analyzing and growing NovaQuest portfolio companies and investments. For more information, please visit www.novaquest.com.

About RTI International
RTI International is an independent, non-profit research institute dedicated to improving the human condition. Clients rely on us to answer questions that demand an objective and multidisciplinary approach—one that integrates expertise across the social and laboratory sciences, engineering, and international development. We believe in the promise of science, and we are inspired every day to deliver on that promise for the good of people, communities, and businesses around the world. For more information, visit www.rti.org.

Media Contact: Jessica Romero
t: 336.728.6541 | Jessica.romero@clinicalink.com




SOURCE NovaQuest Capital Management, L.L.C.



Edison Partners Announces Exit of Billtrust


Edison Partners Announces Exit of Billtrust

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Sale of firm’s shares in payment cycle management solutions leader delivers 10x return
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PRINCETON, N.J. (PRWEB) MAY 14, 2018
Edison Partners today announced it has completed the sale of its stake in Billtrust, the leader in payment cycle management, to New York-based private equity firm W Capital Partners. The sale generated more than an 10x return for Edison, the first institutional investor in Billtrust. Additional financial terms of the sale were not disclosed.
Founded in 2001, New Jersey-based Billtrust helps companies automate and accelerate their accounts receivable (AR) processes to increase cash flow, improve operational efficiency and drive customer satisfaction. Since Edison’s investment, Billtrust has grown revenue 30x, built its workforce to more than 500 employees and acquired seven companies, including its most recent acquisition of Credit2B.
“Billtrust Founder and CEO Flint Lane was a visionary in 2001, continues to be the leading innovator in B2B billing payments, and pioneered payment cycle management today. He saw the opportunity in this market before the Fintech ecosystem declared enterprise-focused Fintech a ‘cool’ sector,” said Chris Sugden, Managing Partner of Edison Partners, who led the investment. “Flint and the entire Billtrust team epitomize the founders, CEOs and growth-stage businesses we aim to serve.”
“Edison’s capital helped to finance our growth, while the investments from the Edison team, Director Network and the Edison Edge value-add platform helped us to scale our growth,” said Flint Lane, Founder and CEO, Billtrust. “Chris’ board leadership, mentorship and friendship has been invaluable to the business, and to me personally; and more recently, Kelly Ford’s hands-on participation with our team and board has helped us evolve our go-to-market strategy to achieve the next level of scalable growth. I look forward to many more years working in close partnership with the team at Edison.”
“While we at Edison strove to enhance Billtrust’s business, Flint enhanced ours. He inspired our annual CEO Summit and the expansion of our Edison Edge platform,” said Kelly Ford, Partner at Edison Partners and board member. “We thank Flint and the entire Billtrust team for their vision, tenacity and partnership, qualities that exceptionally position them for continued B2B billing and payment market dominance.”
Robert Farrell, CEO of GlobalTranz and a member of the Edison Director Network, and Ford will both remain on the company’s board of directors. Sugden had previously served on the company’s board for more than a decade.
This exit underpins LendIt Fintech’s recent recognition of Edison Partners as Fintech Equity Investor of the Year. The firm has financed and guided more than 200 private companies, including 40 Fintech companies. Noteworthy exits include EdgeTrade, FolioDynamix, GAIN Capital, Liberty Tax, OptionsCity, Princeton Financial and now Billtrust. Current growth equity investments include: Axial, BFS Capital, Clearpool Group, ComplySci, GAN Integrity, MoneyLion, Predata, Scivantage, Solovis and TraderTools.
About Edison Partners
For more than 30 years, Edison Partners has been helping CEOs and their executive teams navigate the entrepreneurial journey and build successful companies. Through the unique combination of growth capital and the Edison Edge platform, consisting of operating leverage, the Edison Director Network, and executive education, Edison employs a holistic approach to accelerating growth and creating value for businesses ($5 to $20 million in revenue) in financial, healthcare, and enterprise technology sectors. Edison investment objectives also include: buyouts, recapitalizations, spinouts and secondary stock purchases.
Edison’s active portfolio has created aggregate market value exceeding $10 billion. Its long-tenured team based in Princeton, NJ manages more than $1 billion in assets throughout the eastern United States.
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KELLY FORD
Edison Partners
+1 6098739243
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PhillyTechNews Daily Page 5/14: FanDuel, DraftKings may be big winners from Supreme Court ruling; SAP launching new blockchain supply chain initiative



PhillyTech Daily Page 5/13




PhillyTech PeopleNews 5/12/2018: Quantaverse, Revzilla, Acrometis





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QuantaVerse Announces Appointment of Banking Technology Leader Kenneth M. Harvey to Board of Managers.
QuantaVerse, the first in the market with artificial intelligence (AI) solutions purpose-built for identifying financial crimes, today announced the appointment of technology and banking industry veteran Kenneth M. Harvey to the QuantaVerse Board of Managers. In this role, Ken will lend his counsel and expertise to the company’s management team.
Harvey brings to QuantaVerse nearly 30 years of experience, leadership and expertise in the banking and technology industries. Prior to joining QuantaVerse, Harvey served as COO/CIO of HSBC Holdings where he was responsible for technology and operations. He is currently Chairman of the Board for both CLS Group Holdings AG and CLS Bank International as well as holding the position of Outside Director for CLS Group.





















PhillyTechNews Daily Page 5/10: EPAM's great Q1; Vertex competitor files for big IPO




PhillyTechNews Daily Page 5/8: Comcast expands acquisition plans; Vistar Media, 2nd life for an original Venmo concept?




PhillyTechNews Daily Page 5/7







Veeva establishing new hub near Columbus, but Radnor presence will continue

Tom Paine




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Veeva Systems, the high-flying cloud computing company for the Life Sciences industry, announced in March it was opening a new hub in Dublin, a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. In late April it announced it had leased space. Veeva is headquartered in Pleasanton, CA.

Veeva (NYSE: VEEV) now has a market cap of over $10 billion, and that's not built upon some mythical expectations; revenue increased 23% to $185 million and net profit margin grew 26% in its quarter ending in January.

Its one of most closely watched cloud computing companies on Wall Street. Veeva offers a closely integrated series of apps and data along with a proprietary SaaS database infrastructure (though it uses the Salesforce platform for its CRM business) which helps Pharma companies manage sales and regulatory activities.

Veeva plans to increase to 130 employees in three years across its engineering, IT, services, and finance organizations in the Columbus region.

Veeva also has maintained, since its origin in 2007, a Radnor office headed by President & cofounder Matt Wallach which has contributed considerably to its sales, marketing and product development. Veeva, which employs more than 200 in the Philly area, will continue that presence, a Veeva spokesperson told me.


Veeva currently has about 2200 employees worldwide.


This is a writeup that describes why Columbus may be drawing tech companies:




Video: LLR Partners on what makes an ideal portfolio company. (Mergers & Acqusitions)



PhillyTechNews Daily Page 5/3

PhillyTechNews content-sharing partner #NJTechWeekly & its creator Esther Surden were featured on #WCBS New York.

Home meal kit provider #BlueApron made a slight recovery in the first quarter, adding a small number of net new customers.

New Jersey revealed the content of its bid for Amazon HQ2. "But the document’s last six pages — which include details about the $7 billion in tax breaks New Jersey would give Amazon — are redacted," notes Business Insider.

Philadelphia-based Janney Montgomery Scott LLC acquired Baltimore-based middle-market investment bank HighBank.








PhillyTechNews Daily Page 5/2



Hamilton-Based Voxware Celebrates 25 Years


Hamilton-Based Voxware Celebrates 25 Years


By STEVE SEARS for NJTechWeekly April 23, 2018, 10 p.m.


Voxware CEO Keith Phillips | Courtesy Voxware

When Keith Phillips, president and CEO of Voxware (Hamilton), reflected on his company’s 25th anniversary during an interview with NJTechWeekly.com, his pride was evident.

“Our 25th year is a tremendous accomplishment,” he said. “We see companies in the industries we serve closing their doors because they were unable to deliver for their customers. We’re very excited to celebrate this achievement.”

Voxware was founded in 1993 as a provider of software that translated human speech into computer digital languages and decoded them for listening. It has since emerged as a leading provider of cloud-based voice and analytic supply-chain solutions for distribution operations.

The firm recently commemorated its anniversary at the MODEX 2018 trade show. “MODEX 2018 was a great show for Voxware. The traffic coming through the booth and conversations with prospects and customers alike were extremely productive,” said Phillips.

“Our augmented reality demo station was three to four people deep for much of the show, with folks wanting to learn more about that solution. AR is still very new to a lot of people, but it’s an application that, if deployed properly, can be a real game-changer for companies. It combines traditional voice with scanning, vision and image/video capture; and it’s another example of Voxware giving our customers the option for the best technology for the job at hand.”

He continued, “Our commitment to continually investing in our technology enables us to deliver the right solution to maximize the efficiency of the distribution center for our customers.

“We revolutionized supply-chain technology in 2012 by introducing Cloud Voice Management Suite, the first cloud-based voice offering delivering the same quality as our on-premises solution.”

“There are several advantages for choosing the cloud offering, including: no IT infrastructure costs; reduced burden on internal IT resources; cost-effectiveness, given that hardware devices and software upgrades refresh automatically within the subscription model; and scalability (adding users during peak times with ease). And with cloud, many smaller companies can realize the benefits of voice technology that traditionally could not undertake a voice deployment,” Phillips wrote us in an email.

Apart from its headquarters in Hamilton, Voxware has offices in London (opened in the mid-2000s) and Boston, both of which handle current and prospective customers’ needs, but all software development and R&D is handled in the United States.

According to Phillips, Voxware has been awarded several patents for its voice technology, which has greatly helped many of its clients. “There are many benefits companies realize from our software: accuracy results approaching 100 percent, improved customer experience, double-digit productivity gains, accelerated fulfillment and on-time deliveries and real-time visibility throughout the entire distribution operations,” he told us.

Phillips noted that Voxware has “an ongoing strategy of future-proofing our solution for our customers through continued investment in our technology and continuously introducing new solutions.

“We are continuing to build out our augmented reality solution, which we launched in 2017,” he said. “We are also further developing our predictive and prescriptive analytics capabilities. That tool is driven by data gleaned from multiple areas of the supply chain ? warehouse teams, transportation, ERP, WMS, CRM, HR, social media, etc. ? to not only improve efficiency within a single distribution center function, but to also improve system-wide performance,” he said.

Companies benefit from proficiency and productivity gains in their distribution operations. They “would turn us on and see their accuracy numbers increase to nearly 100 percent and see productivity gains from 20 to 30 percent. As our product offering has evolved, companies are now seeing the real value of voice across the entire distribution center. Most customers are now using our multimodal voice solutions for multiple workflows to automate their entire distribution operations. Combine our voice technology with our real-time analytics tool, which gives warehouse managers the ability to see, measure and manage activity across all distribution centers, and those numbers go through the roof.”

The IT industry is at a critical juncture, and automation in distribution centers is continuing to be a major objective for all industries, Phillips said. “With unemployment numbers as low as they are, companies can no longer add people to solve problems. They are going to have to invest in technology if they want to compete. Through automation, we’re able to increase efficiency and productivity at these companies, while creating a better overall customer experience.”




Esther Surden is Publisher and Editor of NJTechWeekly, and a contributor to Philly Tech News. This article originally appeared in NJTechWeekly, and is republished here with her permission.




PhillyTechNews Daily Page 5/1

Gruber sees different timetable for Apple cross-platform support; SAP wants to attack Salesforce in CRM.