Swiss mobile cloud-based field service app maker Coresystems has raised $15.5 million in Series A funding - its first external funding round, despite being founded in 2002. The investment comes from a consortium of private Swiss investors and well-known German tech investor Peter Zencke, a former SAP executive board member and head of research and development.
Coresystems says the new funding will be used to accelerate product enhancements and business development and sales efforts to meet “growing demand” for its mobile cloud apps and software products, which help both small and large companies manage and deliver customer service out in the field.
It also plans to strengthen its global presence, specificaly expanding its sales and support teams in “key locations” worldwide. As part of the effort, the company, which has 7 offices, including its Swiss HQ in Windisch, along with London, New York, and Shanghai, is also announcing that it's hired Torsten Svensson as Global Head of Sales. Svensson is said to have held multiple regional and EMEA leadership roles in sales and business management for EMC, HP and SAP, so comes with some decent pedigree.
Launched in 2006, Coresystems provides mobile cloud-solutions for small, medium, and large enterprises to help them effectively manage business processes and to deliver a better customer service experience on the ground. Think apps that run on laptops, smartphones and iPads that let reps and engineers out in the field capture, record and report on the processes specific to the business. It claims 100,000 users globally, across a range of industries.
One of those is global power generation equipment supplier Alstom, who, amongst other things, use Coresystems' apps to help engineers inspect nuclear power stations (iPads are put into ‘airplane' mode for safety, apparently). In fact, I'm told that winning Alstrom as a customer provided the “tipping point” for the investment announced today.
So, why is this the company's first external funding round, despite being in business since 2002? The answer is that founder and CEO Manuel Grenacher started building mobile services when he was a student, graduating from the University of Applied Sciences in Windisch, Switzerland, in 2006. Since then, along with his two co-founders, who also went to the same University, he's ploughed revenues back into the company, essentially bootstrapping the operation until now.
To that end, Coresystems' biggest competitors are ServiceMax and ClickSoftware.
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