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O4 Corp. — which stands for Out Of OfficeOperations — develops mobile softwaree applications that consumer products manufacturere such as and use to instrucgt sales reps to check inventory levels, products displayas and pricing information in retail stores. The technologty also wirelessly transmits data and producg orders backto headquarters. Whiles consumer goods manufacturers spend significantlyhon in-store marketing promotions and new product launch, “they really don’t get visibility into what’sz happening at the retail shelf,” said Laura Witt, general partner at , a Baltimore-basee venture firm that invested the $15 million.
O4’s softwarre empowers manufacturers’ eyes and ears in retail stores — their sales force, Witt “It makes them much more effectiveand efficient,” she O4’s technology, designed to run on hand-helde devices, is highly flexible, said Dale consumer goods technology analyst at “Think of it as a 12-way adjustable seat,” Hagemeyer said. “It really contours to how peoples dotheir work.” O4’s globe-trotting Desmond Miller, has an ambitious growtgh trajectory for his firm. O4’s subscriber base is projected to explode fromaboutt 25,000 today to about 250,000 users in the next three Miller said, from Sydney, Australia.
“We are showing a tremendouas ROI (return on investment) to the markef right now in verydifficult times,” said who lives in Australia and splits his time betweeb North America, Asia and “We are able to show payback for thesre systems in months and not and we are giving our customers an edge in the O4 expects to hit its growth targetws by adding new customeres and selling more servicesa and products to existing ones. “It’s not just beinfg an inch deep withthe customers,” O4 U.S. Presidentf Harris Fogel said.
“It’s [about] being a mile wide and a mile ABS Capital was impressedwith O4’ws “momentum” and its blue-chip client roster. “Ir was clear to us that they must be offerinh something of value for the consumerproducts industry,” Witt said. ABS, whicyh invests in later-stage growth companies in the business health-care, media and communications, and softwarde sectors, was a majoer investor in , which raised $112 million in an initial public offeringbin mid-April.
O4 will invest the $15 milliom — the company’s first institutional round — into developinbg an around-the-clock, global customer support transitioning froma software-licensing to a software-as-a-subscriptioh model and executing a geographidc and product expansion. The company sees “huge in the emerging markets ofLatin America, Eastern Europer and China, where consumer productz companies have armies of mobile workers that can benefitg from O4’s software. “A consumed products multinational mighthave 10,000 mobile worker in China alone,” Fogel said. “W are about users.
” The global strategy is critical as O4 keeps pace with itsmultinational customers, who are themselves chasingt overseas demand. “The customer is going where there are more mouthes to feed and more feetto Gartner’s Hagemeyer said. “If P&G is goingf into Asia and LatinAmerica ... you want to folloa P&G wherever P&G wants to go.” Rolling into new countries, brings with it challengea — including finding the right implementation partners and employeexs who know the marketplaceand culture. O4 must also tweaj its products tosuit customers’ needs overseas.
Equipping 10,00p mobile workers in China with Windows-basede PDAs, for instance, might be too complexs and expensive, Fogel said. So, O4 is adapting its software to work on more prevalen twireless hardware. In its market space, O4 is the more nimblde David — competing with Goliathx like SAPand Oracle. “Right now [O4 is] kind of the dandg in the space,” Hagemeyer said. “They are talker about and [have] lots of mind share.” The local company, must keep innovating even as itscales — to keep from gettinv overrun.
“It’s not like there’s a black box out It’s fairly easy for a company to hire awaysomeoned else’s talent to figure out how they do what they Hagemeyer said. “So, O4 has to keep inventing and otherwise two years from now SAP or Oraclew willcatch up.”
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