Durham-based field management software firm ServiceTrade is growing fast, but a slowdown is likely.
The firm, at 112 employees at the beginning of the year, is now at about 200 with the acquisition of assets, including employees, from Colorado-based Asurio. As it digests its recent buy, however, that blistering pace may settle, CEO Billy Marshall says.
ServiceTrade isn’t releasing the finances of the deal, but it was a competitive bid process, said Marshall. Asurio scales up an existing offering in a big way. ServiceTrade already offers a “generic” product called ServiceForms, a technician data collection form that generates a simple report.
Through Asurio’s expertise, it becomes a much more valuable offering, Marshall said. “They are a specialized compliance and data capture application for fire and life safety companies,” he explained. “So they help those companies automate the data capture and the generation of compliance reports related to code mandated inspections.”
And that’s critical for companies.
“Unless you’re sitting in your home … your building has systems in it that must be inspected, generally every year,” he said.
Think about Duke University Medical Center, for example.
“That’s a very large fire alarm and sprinkler inspection that is mandated … generating that data from what could be the inspection of 3,000 to 5,000 unique fire system elements is kind of a complex undertaking,” he said. “And Asurio helps manage the collection of that data and the generation of the report.”
The current ServiceTrade offering relies on the customer – “what format do you want? What do you want it to look like?”
The vision to incorporate the Asurio technology is a higher level offering. The company has acquired all of Asurio’s employees, all of its technology and customer contracts. And that means the expertise on what questions that form should be asking.
“It’s one level higher,” he said.
In just acquiring assets such as its eight employees and products (including Asurio’s BirdDog Life Safety Inspection Software), the firm didn’t have to take on any of Asurio’s debt, Marshall said.
Its team is fully remote, with a core group in the Denver area – and they’ll stay remote, Marshall said.
It’s just the latest growth chapter for ServiceTrade, which has been hiring aggressively. But the current macro economic environment means a slowdown.
Marshall said layoff stories at places such as Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Pendo, a Raleigh startup that recently cut 45 jobs from its global workforce, are cautionary.
“Considerations for us right now are, do we remain as aggressive as we have been next year?” he said. “I don’t think we will be.”
While he could envision ending 2023 at 300 people, he doesn’t expect another headcount doubling. While he’s not feeling headwinds in the market yet, discounting the possibility “would be foolish,” he said.
Founded in 2012, the software-as-a-service company serves customers in the fire protection, mechanical and electrical industries.
