TORONTO, ON – June 25, 2020 – ThinkData Works, Inc. (@thinkdataworks) announced today that it has raised $8 million (CAD) in Series A financing led by BDC Capital Inc (BDC ICE Fund) and Yaletown Capital Partners with participation by existing investors, First Ascent Ventures and Extreme Venture Partners.
ThinkData’s end-to-end data management platform, Namara, streams data from any source in the world – public or private – in any format and structure to allow organizations to use endless amounts of data to layer upon existing practices and fuel new business intelligence solutions.
“The ability to layer multiple data sources, both proprietary and public in a standardized structure allows rapid insights that impact the bottom line for all of our customers,” said Bryan Smith, Co-Founder and CEO of ThinkData. “As we continue to simplify the process to access product ready data for the enterprise, we have seen management realize the high cost and inefficiencies of the problems associated with data variety.”
ThinkData’s customer roster includes Royal Bank of Canada, the Government of Canada, Bank of Nova Scotia, TD Bank, and Roche Pharmaceuticals.
“For ThinkData to have won customers of such a high caliber and sophistication speaks to the quality of the platform and technology,” said Sean Brownlee, General Partner at BDC ICE Fund. “The fact that demand for their solution has only increased despite the concerns around the current economic uncertainty demonstrates the value the company can unlock for customers.”
First Ascent Ventures were an early investor in ThinkData. “We were very impressed with the founding team of Bryan Smith (CEO) and Brendan Stennett (CTO) and they have continued to innovate and deliver extraordinary value to customers with a high level of capital efficiency,” said Tony van Marken, Managing Partner of First Ascent Ventures.
ThinkData will use the latest funding to add new talent across Engineering, Sales and Marketing and expand globally. “Having supportive investors is paramount as an entrepreneur and First Ascent Ventures has been a valuable partner and mentor to the management team. We look forward to working with BDC and Yaletown, our new investors, as we scale the company and build a world class organization,” said Bryan Smith, Co-Founder and CEO of ThinkData.
Media InquiriesMcKenzie Foley, ThinkData Works Inc. Marketing and Communications mckenzie@thinkdataworks.com
About ThinkData Works ThinkData Works, Inc. is a Toronto-based data technology company founded in 2014 that makes data access easy. ThinkData’s end-to-end data management platform, Namara, supplies data professionals with efficient tooling for every stage of the data lifecycle. We provide large enterprises access to more data, with less overhead and more confidence to fuel their products, models, and solutions.
BDC ICE BDC Capital’s Industrial, Clean and Energy (ICE) Technology Venture Fund tailors its investments towards capital-efficient and scalable businesses enhancing resource productivity with the potential to operate across a global market. We invest in early and development stage Canadian companies, and use our experience in materials, electronics and ICT to build commercially successful global companies.
Yaletown Partners Yaletown Partners is dedicated to closing the emerging-growth stage investment gap faced by technology companies in Canada, and invests in technology companies that enhance industry and enterprise productivity and sustainability, to help accelerate their growth, shorten exit timeframes and achieve strong exit premiums. The fund has offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Montréal, and a growing presence in Toronto,
Tony van Marken knows what it takes to climb a financial mountain, so how are successful start-ups managing under COVID-19?
EPISODE NOTES
Tony van Marken knows what it takes to climb a financial mountain, so how are successful start-ups managing under COVID-19? The managing partner of First Ascent Ventures explains why not all technology companies are suffering, why enterprise-oriented firms aren’t immune, and how they can adapt to the new normal. Not all start-ups are created equal. van Marken points out that just because a start-up isn’t exposed directly to the consumer that doesn’t mean it isn’t exposed to uncertainty during COVID-19. If you can survive this…
van Marken believes CEOs who can adapt to the pandemic will make their businesses more resilient in the good times, and more likely to accelerate their growth rates once we come out on the other side of the virus
Is your business prepared for the risks associated with employee travel, post COVID-19?
If not, now is the time to consider those risks and implement plans to reduce them. No one can pinpoint the exact timing of a return to business travel, but businesses (both startup and enterprise) must have plans in place for an eventual return of the“traveling employee”. Companies will be expected to provide a ‘duty of care’ to their traveling employees, and at First Ascent Ventures we have identified the opportunities for software as a service to help meet this requirement.
Duty of Care — Why is it Important?
The legal concept of duty of care, as it relates to employee travel, presumes the employer has legal obligations to act in such a manner to avoid any risk to the employee of foreseeable injuries and damages while traveling. Beyond the legal/moral drivers, businesses have been faced with the growing challenge of employees demanding wellness infrastructure, and more broadly, an employer who they trust. The importance of trust and an employer’s commitment to their employee’s trust will help overcome healthcare concerns which will naturally be front of mind for all employees as they return to their usual travel roles.
In recent years, many large organizations have relied upon Global Security Operation Centers (GSOCs) to manage employee travel as it relates to the duty of care. However, our belief is that the COVID-19 crisis will reframe employee expectations and as a result, employers will be required to keep employee safety top of mind and directly address the related risks with detailed policies and programs they’re committed to delivering.
Why is This a Challenge for All Businesses?
For many companies, fulfilling the obligations of the duty of care requires significant administrative work. Human resources have historically been responsible for the bulk of communication and travel management but are not well-positioned to track constant changes in meetings and social events. While having a last-minute sales meeting with a potential client is a positive development, these types of activities post COVID-19 may pose serious health risks for employees. This new travel landscape will require companies to revisit their existing practices to meet the care standards that the laws (of the home country and place the employee is visiting,) and their employees require of them.
A Common Scenario
First Ascent Ventures spoke to a number of operators to create an illustrative scenario that highlights the challenges that will arise for businesses of all sizes once employee travel resumes.
Company X, a Canadian organization, has an employee who plans to lead implementation at a customer’s office in the UK. The immediate questions that must be addressed include:
Status of COVID-19: What is the latest update on COVID-19 outbreaks in the UK and does the UK permit short term travel from abroad?
Immunity/Testing Requirements: Are there any new or changing requirements that exist relating to testing or immunity certification (certificates given to those who have antibodies to the COVID-19 virus)?
Health Protocols: If the employee gets sick while traveling, what protocols should they follow? Is there a specific health provider they are directedto in case of an emergency?
Personal Protective Equipment and Hygiene Practice: Is the employee required to wear a mask on the plane? Does the employee have to wear a mask while they commute within the UK? Will the employer provide unlimited PPE for their employee for the duration of their trip? Does the employer have access to the necessary PPE?
Quarantines: What if travel restrictions or quarantines are introduced in the UK during the employee’s travel? What policies are in place to minimize business disruptions and ensure the employee’s safety?
Contact Tracing Policies: Is the UK implementing a contact tracing platform? Is the employee required to download an application and does the employee know to do this? How will the risks (centralized vs. decentralized platforms) be communicated with the employee?
A Way Forward
At First Ascent Ventures, we believe there are two options for companies who are ready to take this challenge seriously.
1. Build an In-house GSOC Capability — For Select Enterprises
These types of organizations require a full-time staff to monitor employee safety each day across multiple geographic locations. GSOC is responsible for 24-hour incident monitoring, providing constant response support, as well as ongoing analysis to identify any threats to employee assets. Internal company GSOCs are appropriate for large enterprises with significant security budgets. Our team predicts many companies will struggle economically to allocate the capital required to fund these initiatives — especially with the added complications of COVID-19 so the following is a better option;
2. Use 3rd Party Vendor to Identify Risk and Threats (GSOC as a Service) — For Select Enterprise, SME and Startup
At First Ascent Ventures, we predict most companies will begin seeking software vendors to provide the support needed to confidently have their employees resume corporate travel. We believe employers will value software with the ability to analyze the risks of travel to a destination, including the state of quarantines, vaccination requirements, political unrest, and more. We predict these risk management tools, along with a travel planning suite, will be ‘must-have’ software for employers that want to resume travel. The need for these services will likely serve as a catalyst for the emergence of new travel-tech with industry incumbents and new startups seeking to fulfill the needs of small businesses.
The technology already currently exists to track employees. For example, tracking locations using a mobile device is possible through Mobile Device Management (MDM). However, many of these current solutions are likely a step too far for most organization’s privacy policies — are employees willing to be tracked so closely and what will companies do with that information when they have it? A more elegant alternative is integrating a solution into a travel booking system thus removing the conflict of owning location data, which ultimately is a more ethical choice.
Conclusion
Here is a list of steps different stakeholders must take to prepare for the evolution that will take place in business travel:
Startups and SMEs:As a company, you must define your understanding of the duty of care and begin analyzing the available alternatives (software and traditional) to satisfy the needs and expectations of your employees. It is very likely your investors will expect executives to produce well thought out policies (similar to a business continuity plan) to address travel related risks and ensure employee safety and morale.
Investors: Consider the opportunities available in the travel management space for new software/services provided by startups or existing incumbents expanding their current travel offerings.
Trust is essential to the efficacy of any travel plan, given employees will be required to share data, especially location data. At First Ascent Ventures we encourage and advocate for ethical, thoughtful, and safe use of all data, hence this piece and our first Medium post. In a climate of concern about the use of data we encourage you all to take the challenge of business travel seriously, and harness the opportunity it presents to get clear on how you manage your traveling employees in the best interest of your team and your business.
First Ascent Ventures — Who We Are And Behind the Name
First Ascent Ventures was founded in 2015 and is a Toronto based VC fund that invests in emerging Canadian and U.S.-based technology companies that are building the next generation of disruptive, enterprise B2B software. www.firstascent.vc
In mountaineering, a first ascent is the first successful, documented summit of a mountain by an unclimbed route. First ascents are notable because they entail genuine exploration, with greater risks, challenges, and recognition than climbing a route pioneered by others. This is not dissimilar to the challenges and risks involved in building a start-up technology company.
OTTAWA, ON, June 15, 2020 – Kinaxis® Inc. (TSX: KXS), the authority in driving agility for fast, confident decision-making in an unpredictable world, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Toronto-based Rubikloud, a disruptive, emerging provider of AI solutions that automate supply chain prescriptive analytics and decision-making in the retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries.
Globally-recognized retailers and CPG manufacturers in the health and beauty, household and grocery segments use Rubikloud’s AI-based products today. Their offerings include demand forecasting and automation to manage and optimize trade promotions, pricing and assortment to drive product demand and dramatically improve financial results. Kinaxis will enhance RapidResponse’s demand planning capabilities with the Rubikloud offerings, anticipating initial opportunities in the company’s rapidly-growing CPG customer base and over time for other industries such as life sciences. The acquisition also offers Kinaxis a springboard into the enterprise retail industry.
“Rubikloud has capabilities and value that we can offer our CPG customers today, leads us into the retail industry with some bellwether accounts, and adds a group of approximately 80 people to an already-impressive AI and machine learning (ML) team here at Kinaxis. Over time, this enhanced group will contribute to new and existing AI-powered capabilities across the full Kinaxis RapidResponse® platform and applications,” said John Sicard, President and CEO of Kinaxis. “This acquisition reflects the growing importance of AI and ML to power intelligent automation and augment human decision-making to better deliver on customer promises, remove waste and increase resiliency for effective risk management.”
Rubikloud’s SaaS-based ML offerings empower retail and CPG manufacturers to transform their core operations by improving and automating complex, profit-generating decisions. Rubikloud’s proven AI capabilities and intuitive tools enable users to leverage disparate data sources to improve forecast accuracy, site-level allocations, inventory availability and promotion plans by allowing users to run boundless simulations in real time.
“We founded Rubikloud with the belief that purpose-built AI could be used to solve some of the most complex industry problems and we have spent the last seven years building a fantastic product that receives validation from global customers every day,” said Kerry Liu, CEO, Rubikloud. “We’re excited at the prospect of joining Kinaxis, which helps us bring our innovations to a much broader customer base at a faster pace than on our own. Not only that, being two strong Canadian companies we see great cultural synergy and look forward to working on the complex problems we know RapidResponse and concurrent planning can solve for customers.”
Terms of Agreement Kinaxis will acquire Rubikloud for US$60 million in an all-cash transaction that is expected to close within 60 days. Based on Rubikloud’s current revenue and expense profile, the company’s fiscal 2020 revenue and Adjusted EBITDA guidance, as reiterated in its May 6, 2020 news release, remains unchanged. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions.
About Kinaxis Inc. Everyday volatility and uncertainty demand quick action. Kinaxis® delivers the agility to make fast, confident decisions across integrated business planning and the digital supply chain. People can plan better, live better and change the world. Trusted by innovative brands, we combine human intelligence with AI and concurrent planning to help companies plan for any future, monitor risks and opportunities and respond at the pace of change. Powered by an extensible, cloud-based platform, Kinaxis delivers industry-proven applications so everyone can know sooner, act faster and remove waste. For more Kinaxis news, follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter.
We are excited to announce our partnership with JPMorgan Chase, which is now offering Sensibill’s receipt capture and management solution through the Chase Mobile app! With the Chase Mobile Banking app, everyday banking customers can manage home office expenses, submit proof of purchase for insurance claims, track their spending at a granular level, and much more.
Chase has created a digital banking experience that makes it easier for consumers and businesses to manage their finances,” said Corey Gross, co-founder and CEO at Sensibill. “Through our partnership with Chase, millions of customers will have access to a best-in-class product that solves the hassle of expense and receipt management.”
Receipts have historically been a major source of friction and headache for consumers and businesses alike. Sensibill’s digitized approach to receipt management will allow Chase’s customers to conveniently monitor spending and manage their purchases from within the Chase Mobile app. Through a progressive rollout, Sensibill’s solution will be available within the Chase Mobile app to all of its 38 million active mobile users later this year.
About Chase
Chase is the U.S. consumer and commercial banking business of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), a leading global financial services firm with assets of $3.1 trillion and operations worldwide. Chase serves nearly half of America’s households with a broad range of financial services, including personal banking, credit cards, mortgages, auto financing, investment advice, small business loans and payment processing. Customers can choose how and where they want to bank: More than 4,900 branches in 38 states and the District of Columbia, 16,000 ATMs, mobile, online and by phone. For more information, go to chase.com.
Toronto, ON – June 11th 2020 – Sensibill has partnered with Chase to provide the bank with its digital receipt management solution, making it easier and quicker than ever before for Chase customers to make returns, submit warranties and expenses, track spending and manage their financial health.
“Chase has created a digital banking experience that makes it easier for consumers and businesses to manage their finances,” said Corey Gross, co-founder and CEO at Sensibill. “Through our partnership with Chase, millions of customers will have access to a best-in-class product that solves the hassle of expense and receipt management.”
Receipts have historically been a major source of friction and headache for consumers and businesses alike. Sensibill’s digitized approach to receipt management will allow Chase’s customers to conveniently monitor spending and manage their purchases from within the Chase Mobile app. Through a progressive rollout, Sensibill’s solution will be available within the Chase Mobile app to all of its 38 million active mobile users later this year.
Chase is the U.S. consumer and commercial banking business of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), a leading global financial services firm with assets of $3.1 trillion and operations worldwide. Chase serves nearly half of America’s households with a broad range of financial services, including personal banking, credit cards, mortgages, auto financing, investment advice, small business loans and payment processing. Customers can choose how and where they want to bank: More than 4,900 branches in 38 states and the District of Columbia, 16,000 ATMs, mobile, online and by phone. For more information, go to chase.com.
LinkSquares, a Boston-based company that provides an AI-based contract management and analysis platform for corporate legal departments, is today announcing the roll-out later this month of a product that extends its platform to the pre-signature, contract-generation process, to offer enterprises an end-to-end platform for drafting, reviewing and managing contracts.
The company says that the new product, called LinkSquares Finalize, will work seamlessly with its existing post-signature product, which it now calls LinkSquares Analyze, to provide an integrated platform.
LinkSquares Finalize will provide three capabilities, the company says:
Drafting. The product will enable legal teams and sales, HR, procurement, marketing, and other internal departments to create documents with pre-approved language based on contract templates, helping finalize contracts more quickly and reduce risk through the use of standardized language.
Contract review and versioning. The product will allow contract management teams to receive notifications throughout the negotiation process and work autonomously on redlining and negotiations, while also engaging with other departments that may need to contribute.
Approval. The product provides final approval notification, notifying the general counsel, chief legal officer or other department heads who need to provide sign-off on the final contract.
The company says it developed the product in response to feedback from its customers — which include DraftKings, Fitbit and Asurion — that wanted an integrated platform for pre- and post-signature contract management.
“In the race to accelerate contract generation and approvals while using a lean bank of tools and resources, legal teams demanded a solution that could handle both pre-signature activity and post-signature analysis,” Vishal Sunak, LinkSquares CEO and cofounder, said in a statement.
“The new pre-signature capabilities give legal teams one, end-to-end tool that can handle contracts at their inception through execution, which removes silos and improves transparency for a streamlined contracting process across the organization.”
In February, the five-year-old company announced that it had raised $14.5 million in a Series A financing round, bringing its total financing to $21.5 million.
Corporate contract management may be the hottest area in legal technology right now, at least when measured by investment dollars. Just last month, a single day saw investments in four companies totalling $70 million.
This article, by First Ascent Ventures, is the first in a series that will outline emerging trends across the Privacy and Security space.
Katharine Tomko, Venture Partner at First Ascent Ventures
It would be an understatement to say that COVID-19 has drastically altered daily life and business dealings across the globe. The Canadian technology space is not immune to this disruption and as a venture fund supporting local innovation, the daily announcement of layoffs across the technology ecosystem has been painful to watch.
At First Ascent Ventures, we have worked very closely with each of our North American portfolio companies to deepen our understanding of not only the challenges but also the numerous opportunities(eternal Canadian optimists!) that exist across various verticals in enterprise software.
One such area that First Ascent Ventures has spent considerable time exploring is the Privacy and Security startup space. In the past year, the fund has added significant privacy industry expertise with Katharine Tomko, the Former Head of Privacy Programs at Facebook, joining as a Venture Partner.
This article will discuss some of the work our fund has undertaken in the Privacy and Security space, and specifically, outline four areas within privacy that have been highlighted as “ripe for startup disruption” since the COVID-19 crisis emerged.
Trends and Opportunities
Connecting Remote Workers With The Systems And Services That They Need To Perform Their Jobs.
Problem — While most companies have the infrastructure for remote employee connectivity (VPN, etc.), very few have the capacity to provide for a fully remote workforce for months at a time. The first weeks of lockdown were a scramble for hardware capacity, circuit upgrades, and hasty network configuration changes with a view of ‘it’s an emergency, we’ll clean this up later’, and the associated security headaches. Employee productivity was often hampered by poor network performance, as over-taxed VPN infrastructure was forced to scale beyond its design.
Opportunity —“Support of large scale remote working” as a highly available, performance service is now a budgetary item for every company that employs knowledge workers. Most forward-thinking companies will iterate beyond the traditional centralized VPN architecture, and move to a ‘zero trust’ architecture, as popularized by Google’s own corporate network with their ‘Beyond Corp’ design. The Zero Trust model assumes that there are hackers both within and outside the network, which effectively prevents any machine from being automatically trusted. Zero Trust ultimately shifts access controls from the perimeter (ie. a VPN gateway) to internally authenticating and verifying individual devices and computers. This allows employees to work securely from any location without the need for a traditional VPN. This will serve as a major technology refresh for most large companies and their ‘traditional’ VPN device vendors will not be able to accommodate this change with their existing holistic solutions. There are no standout ‘incumbent’ players in this massive market, and opportunities exist across all areas of this architecture.
Securing And Tracking Remote Employee Assets.
Problem — There are in essence two problems at work here. First, most large IT infrastructures have been built with the physical office in mind, and remote workers are an afterthought. Existing management systems and security tooling are often subpar for remote devices. Second, the biggest security problem that most companies have is understanding their existing device inventory; solid asset management and inventory are the cornerstones of any good security program — for example, you can’t patch unaccounted-for inventory. The Equifax breach, which happened through a staging server that was ‘forgotten’, is an illustrative example. Remote working further exacerbates this problem as the assets are pushed out beyond the traditional network edge.
Opportunity — A significant amount of security budget dollars have been spent on plugging ’security devices’ into internal networks over the past twenty years (intrusion detection, etc.). As the design of the network changes towards a model where both ‘on network’ and remote workers are treated equally as first class citizens, we can expect a whole new category of security control to emerge. The billions of dollars spent on security hardware will move into software. Similarly, as companies move to a ‘zero trust’ networking architecture, they will be fully reliant on their asset management and inventory systems being up to date to ensure that they are only providing data access to devices that they actively manage and maintain.
Business Continuity Planning & Execution.
Problem — While most companies have some form of a business continuity plan, it’s usually a neglected 45 page document at the bottom of a drawer, with little understanding of its practical use. During COVID-19, boards, investors and key customers were all asking for details on business continuity plans, often requiring a copy of the actual document, and specifics on how it has been tested and updated over time.
Opportunity —Business continuity planning is a fairly specialized practice, with ‘control owners’ spread across all parts of the organization. It’s extremely laborious to create, test, update and attain management approval for these plans, and they are almost always missing some key types of ‘disaster’ — how many companies had ‘pandemic’ as a realistic risk to plan for in 2020? Now that companies have executed their plans (often for the first time), and been forced into transparency with their key stakeholders, we can expect to see renewed focus on building and maintaining a comprehensive disaster recovery/business continuity plan. There are opportunities for software to streamline this process, from guiding the organization through best practices in creating the plan, to managing control ownership across the organization, to ensuring regular testing of the plan and providing board visibility.
Physical Security/Safety of Employees.
Problem — While most travel has been eliminated from company budgeted expenses for the second and third quarter of 2020, many foresee a steady return to normal business travel later this year and into early 2021. Companies are responsible for the safety of their employees while they are on business travel or working in remote offices, and employee health (exposure to outbreaks, etc.), and safety (civil unrest, quarantine rules, etc.), will be a top priority. It has been some time since the average employee contemplated their safety while traveling for business. If business travel is really necessary for a job function, expect employees to hold their employer to a higher standard when it comes to safeguarding their health.
Opportunity — The largest and most forward-thinking companies already track and provide support to their employees while on business travel. As both employer and employee fully internalize who really owns the risks of business travel, expect these types of ‘global security operations centers’ to become more commonplace at large organizations, and to trickle down into smaller companies. Opportunities exist for software to support these functions, with integrations into corporate travel systems and automated integrations with government travel advisories.
Conclusion
We would encourage both startups and larger organizations to reflect on these four emerging trends in the privacy and security space and examine their own capabilities to address these concerns. First Ascent Ventures is confident that while these issues arose because of the massive work from home movement caused by COVID-19, enterprises will continue to keep privacy and security top of mind even after the world returns to normalcy (i.e. back to the office).
First Ascent Ventures is dedicated to working with companies and/or investors addressing these gaps in enterprise privacy. We hope to contribute and ensure that the next-generation of enterprise security is one that actively prepares companies for the future privacy challenges that lie ahead, rather than reacting after it is too late.
First Ascent Ventures — Who We Are And Behind the Name
Makalu as seen from the Summit of Everest. Photography by Tony van Marken, Founder, First Ascent Ventures
First Ascent Ventures was founded in 2015 and is a Toronto based VC fund that invests in emerging Canadian and U.S.-based technology companies that are building the next generation of disruptive, enterprise B2B software. www.firstascent.vc
In mountaineering, a first ascent is the first successful, documented summit of a mountain by an unclimbed route. First ascents are notable because they entail genuine exploration, with greater risks, challenges and recognition than climbing a route pioneered by others. This is not dissimilar to the challenges and risks involved in building a start-up technology company.
“A product’s satisfaction score is calculated by a proprietary algorithm that factors in real-user satisfaction ratings from review data. Software buyers can compare products according to their satisfaction scores to streamline the buying process and quickly identify the best products based on the experiences of their peers.”
The company outperformed incumbents such as Oracle (#7), SAP (#11) and PTC (#12).
This follows the G2 Crowds spring 2020 awards, at which the company received 6. These include: Users love Us, being a Momentum leader to Easiest to Set up.
ScribbleLive is an award-winning content performance company that provides global brands with the insights and solutions they need to better attract, convert, and retain their audiences.
Companies such as Red Bull, FedEx, Dell, Reuters, Yahoo, American Express, and the Boston Globe leverage the ScribbleLive Content Cloud to create scalable, premium content, interactive experiences and real-time audience engagement.
Our goal is to help you optimize your content performance and drive better business results.
Q4 is a leading global provider of cloud-based investor relations and capital market solutions with has offices in New York, Chicago, Toronto, Copenhagen, and London.
Their comprehensive portfolio of IR solutions, including quantitative and real-time shareholder analytics, IR desktop, websites, and webcasting arm industry professionals with the tools and insights required to run award-winning IR programs, make effective business decisions, and better engage with the street.
The Assent Compliance Platform is a centralized supply chain data management platform that leverages automated supplier engagement and logic-driven data validation to provide actionable analytics on information.
The solution combines leading-edge technologies with extensive supply chain expertise to enhance data management for product compliance, corporate social responsibility and vendor risk.
Sensibill works with the most innovative global financial institutions to solve their customers’ pain point of managing receipts.
Sensibill’s solution drives net new engagements across online and mobile banking channels, while unlocking deep purchase insights across all payment methods. The service is fully white-labeled, designed specifically to meet bank requirements and is live with Tier 1 financial institutions today.
The company operates in the United States, Europe and Canada.
AI STARTUP RUBIKLOUD TO BE ACQUIRED BY OTTAWA-BASED KINAXIS FOR $81.4 MILLION CAD
OTTAWA, ON, June 15, 2020 – Kinaxis® Inc. (TSX: KXS), the authority in driving agility for fast, confident decision-making in an unpredictable world, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Toronto-based Rubikloud, a disruptive, emerging provider of AI solutions that automate supply chain prescriptive analytics and decision-making in the retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries.
Globally-recognized retailers and CPG manufacturers in the health and beauty, household and grocery segments use Rubikloud’s AI-based products today. Their offerings include demand forecasting and automation to manage and optimize trade promotions, pricing and assortment to drive product demand and dramatically improve financial results. Kinaxis will enhance RapidResponse’s demand planning capabilities with the Rubikloud offerings, anticipating initial opportunities in the company’s rapidly-growing CPG customer base and over time for other industries such as life sciences. The acquisition also offers Kinaxis a springboard into the enterprise retail industry.
“Rubikloud has capabilities and value that we can offer our CPG customers today, leads us into the retail industry with some bellwether accounts, and adds a group of approximately 80 people to an already-impressive AI and machine learning (ML) team here at Kinaxis. Over time, this enhanced group will contribute to new and existing AI-powered capabilities across the full Kinaxis RapidResponse® platform and applications,” said John Sicard, President and CEO of Kinaxis. “This acquisition reflects the growing importance of AI and ML to power intelligent automation and augment human decision-making to better deliver on customer promises, remove waste and increase resiliency for effective risk management.”
Rubikloud’s SaaS-based ML offerings empower retail and CPG manufacturers to transform their core operations by improving and automating complex, profit-generating decisions. Rubikloud’s proven AI capabilities and intuitive tools enable users to leverage disparate data sources to improve forecast accuracy, site-level allocations, inventory availability and promotion plans by allowing users to run boundless simulations in real time.
“We founded Rubikloud with the belief that purpose-built AI could be used to solve some of the most complex industry problems and we have spent the last seven years building a fantastic product that receives validation from global customers every day,” said Kerry Liu, CEO, Rubikloud. “We’re excited at the prospect of joining Kinaxis, which helps us bring our innovations to a much broader customer base at a faster pace than on our own. Not only that, being two strong Canadian companies we see great cultural synergy and look forward to working on the complex problems we know RapidResponse and concurrent planning can solve for customers.”
Terms of Agreement Kinaxis will acquire Rubikloud for US$60 million in an all-cash transaction that is expected to close within 60 days. Based on Rubikloud’s current revenue and expense profile, the company’s fiscal 2020 revenue and Adjusted EBITDA guidance, as reiterated in its May 6, 2020 news release, remains unchanged. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions.
About Kinaxis Inc. Everyday volatility and uncertainty demand quick action. Kinaxis® delivers the agility to make fast, confident decisions across integrated business planning and the digital supply chain. People can plan better, live better and change the world. Trusted by innovative brands, we combine human intelligence with AI and concurrent planning to help companies plan for any future, monitor risks and opportunities and respond at the pace of change. Powered by an extensible, cloud-based platform, Kinaxis delivers industry-proven applications so everyone can know sooner, act faster and remove waste. For more Kinaxis news, follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter.
Upchain is a cloud PLM solution that integrates engineering data up and down the value chain to drive collaboration, innovation, and growth.
Started in 2015 with the goal of changing what PLM means for users across the supply chain, Upchain's vision is a completely interconnected supply chain from the first nut to the final bolt, where collaboration is the default setting, and where mission-critical data is simultaneously accessible and secure. We think process doesn’t have to be as hard as it is, and we intend to make it a whole lot easier for everyone.
ThinkData Works Inc. is a Toronto-based technology company whose platform, Namara.io, is used by some of the worlds’ largest organizations to process and refine data into usable products. We host one of the worlds’ largest repositories of publicly available data and enable our clients to significantly increase the amount of information they use to run their business.
At ThinkData, our mission is to build the easiest and most secure solution that enables our users to access, collaborate, and integrate with the data that powers their business. Some of the largest companies in the world use our platform to build machine intelligent solutions that are redefining their industries - all built on the back of our platform Namara.
Sportlogiq is an AI powered sports analytics company. We help teams win more games and broadcasters engage more viewers.
Our advanced analytics software tracks the location and actions of every player on the ice, field, or court using standard game footage. Machine intelligence techniques are then used to extract meaningful insights from the data collected, allowing teams and fans to understand and experience the game in ways previously unimaginable.
Dialogue offers a range of healthcare services to employees and their families. We work hard to keep individuals healthy, present at work, productive and happy.
Through Dialogue, employees can chat with a nurse for any health or well-being related questions, consult a psychologist when they are stressed, chat with a nutritionist to lose weight, or consult with a doctor for conditions that can be managed virtually. We are a new part of your employees' benefits program. No more time wasted in waiting rooms, or conditions that go untreated because they simply don't have time.
DailyPay partners with companies to offer employees the ability to control when they get paid. Not only does this solution empower financial wellness, but for the company it acts as a tool to recruit, retain, and engage their workforce. At DailyPay, our mission is to offer people their first steps toward financial security.
The senior management team at DailyPay spent years at AOL, Goldman Sachs, and LendingHome. DailyPay is backed by leading venture capital firms and world class strategic investors. The Company is headquartered in New York.
At LinkSquares, we think your internal legal and finance teams have better things to do than spending thousands of hours a year reviewing contracts one by one. So we built software that automatically reads and retrieves key data from your entire library of agreements, making review and diligence projects lightning fast and super simple. You'll be up and running on our AI-powered Contract Analytics cloud in a snap too - our white-glove onboarding will have you launched, trained, and fully integrated into your workflows in 30 days.
So go focus on raising money, getting acquired, or just plain growing as fast as you can. With LinkSquares, your contracts will become a source of knowledge the entire company can depend on.