WorkWave continues to impress with its results following its separation out of IFS, even outshining the global ERP company’s own impressive set of results. It announced its half-year results with 168% growth year to date and revenue growth in the second quarter, an impressive 148% year over year.
WorkWave CEO David F. Giannetto commented: “During these times of uncertainty it is even more critical that we continue to focus on consistently delivering tangible value to our customers. That, combined with our ability to be a strong partner, will carry them — and WorkWave — through any challenges they may face. We expect our outstanding success to continue, and believe that our constant focus on running a well-managed, profitable, organically growing business puts us in a superior position versus our competition.”
Over the last few months, WorkWave has enhanced both its product portfolio and its customer experience services. It launched a Real Green community site. Its aim is to create a community of customers and provide access to key WorkWave resources in a scalable way.
The company also launched a Customer Experience Department. This team is focused on helping customers drive success by utilizing WorkWave solutions. Expansion in the customer success team has introduced the capability to help customers with merger and acquisition activities
These additions and other hires have seen the company grow its employee numbers by 243%. That growth, both organic and inorganic, has not come at the expense of the culture. It was recently named in NJBIZ’s 2022 best places to work for the eighth consecutive year.
Where is the growth coming from?
Enterprise Times had the opportunity to ask Giannetto some questions about the results, which also saw an increase of 68% in new customer logos and a 122% net retention
Enterprise Times asked Giannetto which industry segment saw the biggest growth
“We have recently seen strong adoption in the cleaning, janitorial and security verticals, as well as with a series of new solutions we’ve introduced downmarket – PestPac Lite, TEAM Lite and Real Green Lite. These solutions are geared toward growth-minded, small-to-midsize customers across the pest control, cleaning and green industries, respectively.
“This is a traditionally underserved market, and the holistic nature of our solutions lends itself well to these smaller businesses, as WorkWave is often using its collective bargaining power on these customers’ behalf, to give them benefits and discounts they could not otherwise achieve on their own.
“WorkWave has long been the dominant provider to green industries with our Real Green solution (acquired in 2021), but we are now seeing significant expansion and growth as we’ve brought our greater development capacity to bear, quickly moving that platform’s capabilities far ahead of where any of our competitors could match. This has been something Real Green customers have been asking for, and they are enthusiastically supporting our progress.”
International expansion evolves
When WorkWave acquired TEAM in 2021, it brought with it an office in the UK, and another acquisition a larger one in Verona Italy. There was no regional breakdown in the results, Enterprise Times asked Giannetto what growth in Europe had been.
“Both Europe and Australia have been major areas of expansion for WorkWave over the past year. We expect this to continue across the next several years as we release modernized versions of existing solutions, as well as deliver previously unavailable solutions into these markets in early 2023.
“Our advancements in the global-ready enterprise data platform and new universal mobile apps have been well-received. This, combined with very strong local teams that came into WorkWave through the TEAM Software acquisition, have begun to significantly improve our presence overseas.“
What are the plans for future growth?
“WorkWave currently has customers in 55 different countries, so our global footprint is fairly well established at this point. Internationally, our focus is on bringing what are industry and market-leading solutions in North America, into markets where they have not yet been fully localized and therefore could not be penetrated at scale.
“For example, PestPac, the industry-leading solution for the pest control industry in North America, has customers in both Europe and Australia, but full localization of the solution will not come until early 2023. At that point we will be able to significantly increase our sales and marketing activity to achieve this same level of market leadership in these other markets.
“It is in contrast with North America, where we are actively penetrating new verticals to gain the same level of market leadership that we have in our established verticals, and adding additional services and solutions to both gain additional wallet share and strengthen our relationship with customers.”
Will WorkWave launch more solutions internationally, in existing and new markets?
“Yes, WorkWave already has a presence in ANZ through TEAM Software, our portfolio of cleaning, janitorial and security solutions, and is growing aggressively in these regions. We are looking to take our SMB-focused solutions into the UK, Ireland and ANZ market in 2023. We are also planning for an expansion of our core pest and lawn service software solutions, PestPac and Real Green, into Latin/South America markets in the near term.”
Investment in existing products
Besides adding the new Lite versions, WorkWave has also continued to invest in its existing products. Importantly this has meant leveraging features from across the portfolio. One example is the introduction of its award-winning Forms tools from WorkWave into Real Green. Forms enable organisations to create paperless electronic forms, including contracts, proposals, and check sheets.
Another first is the introduction of a new set of financial services offerings, including credit cards, lending, insurance and others. There is also new payment functionality with mobile and back office check scanning and support for digitized checks. These features are aimed at improving cash flow and reducing fraud. Unusually WorkWave has not appeared to have partnered with any of the usual suspects to achieve this.
Who is WorkWave partnering with? Giannetto replied. “While WorkWave is always actively seeking strong partners that might be able to help our customers, as we say, “maximize their money”, one of the things that makes WorkWave’s approach fundamentally different is that we underwrite the risk of financial solutions that we offer to our customers.
“This means that while we may partner with someone to deliver a specific solution, WorkWave will always maintain control of the offering, so that our customers can be assured that they will only work with trusted partners that are acting in the best interest of our customers.
“A good example of this is our recent partnership with Visa to offer a Visa-branded Business Builder credit card that helps our small business customers build credit in their business’s name, positioning them for greater future success.”
Inflation is increasing; the US central bank recently increased interest rates by 0.75% in its fourth rise since March 2022. Enterprise Times asked Giannetto whether this is having an impact on the market?
“We are seeing that all industries are being affected by the current market inflation and are having to adjust in several ways. Costs continue to rise and we are seeing tighter spending habits across the verticals we serve. The cost of supplies (fertilizers, vehicles, etc.) have also increased and become more difficult to maintain, which is causing our customers to consider price increases for their service offerings.
“Many of our customers have been successful directly passing these costs on to their customers, while the most operationally effective of our customers have also sought to offset them with a shift to software-driven work efficiencies that will help keep costs low, such as route optimization, sensor technology and software automation.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
WorkWave is well backed and continues to grow both through reaching more sectors for its selected industries. It is well poised for international expansion. The trick will be delivering the same experience in those new international markets. The US is a huge market compared to most. It may need to consider acquisitions to gain a foothold in each of the countries it intends to target.
While the UK may be easier because of the common language, the EU commonality of regulation may attract it. 2023 will be an interesting year if it makes a serious attempt to internationalise. If it was to continue its current growth trajectory, it will need to succeed. Sister company IFS may help with this growth as it has deep experience in those international markets.
