eQuip Case Study
- Headquarters: Baltimore, MD
- Acquisition Date: July 2018
- Vertical Market: Asset Management
- Visit Company Website
Background
In July 2018, E-Innovative Services Group, LLC (E-ISG) was acquired by AssetWorks, LLC (subsidiary of Volaris Group). Based in Baltimore, MD, E-ISG was founded by three partners who had a passion for delivering high quality software solutions to the asset management industry. E-ISG’s solution, eQuip, offers users a robust and dynamic solution for tracking, managing, and reporting on assets across their lifecycle. Upon joining AssetWorks, eQuip was integrated with AssetWorks’ Asset Management offerings.
Since the acquisition, E-ISG’s founding CEO and CFO have pursued new opportunities. The founding CTO, Eric Beser, has continued his role with the development of eQuip and continues to grow within the organization. We met with Beser to discuss his experience with the acquisition and his involvement with growing the eQuip by AssetWorks solution.
The Decision to Sell
After many successful years of growing E-ISG, the owners were looking to take their business to the next level and realized that they would need an investor. Prior to engaging Volaris, E-ISG considered an investor who would assume the majority of the business and establish sales targets for the coming year. The targets were ambitious, yet attainable. However, E-ISG’s owners lacked general alignment with the investor and therefore decided to pursue Volaris as a prospective acquirer.
The owners of E-ISG could see a clear difference between Volaris Group and other acquirers.
Knowing that Volaris has acquired hundreds of software companies and has experience in the Asset Management industry was a huge factor in our decision. Additionally, the commitment to keep our team intact and the willingness to work with us to grow the business and meet our revenue goals proved that Volaris was the right home for our company.
Post-Acquisition Success
The integration of E-ISG’s product, eQuip, to the AssetWorks product suite was a very smooth and successful process. As a result, the customer experience has improved significantly, and the original E-ISG team members have been able to grow and develop professionally within the organization.
The first step of the integration process was to analyze the business and solutions to see what was already working well and what areas could be improved. The goal was to develop new processes where necessary and fix any issues in the product based on customer feedback. “During this process, we really changed the environment of the development and support teams and prioritized making a much better product for our customers. The integration team at AssetWorks had the expertise and methodology that our team was lacking,” said, Beser, now the Senior Development Director at AssetWorks.
Not only was the team able to collectively improve the product, but they were also able to improve the onboarding and support experience for customers. Since eQuip is highly configurable and offers built-in workflow capabilities for the customer based on their existing business tools, there have been many enhancement requests. “A number of customers are requesting additional work to add capabilities and add-ons for professional services from AssetWorks. They see the value in their solutions and are looking to increase capabilities for their organization,” said Beser.
In addition to the benefits for eQuip customers, another advantage of the acquisition has been the professional growth of the original E-ISG staff. Beser and his staff have been working closely with the AssetWorks development and support teams while sharing industry best practices and insights. Specifically, Beser has worked with the lead developer in AssetWorks’ Austin, TX office to institute an Agile process that allows stakeholders to collaborate on projects at every stage of the process. This support allows the team to continually innovate and improve product capabilities.
Upon acquisition, my role was to bring the development team up to speed with the architecture of the product, as they were going to be helping with the development of the eQuip solution. We started working heavily with the AssetWorks development and implementation teams on all areas where eQuip needed improvements.
Volaris’ long-term commitment has positively impacted E-ISG’s growth by giving employees opportunities to grow and become more successful in their careers. When E-ISG joined AssetWorks, new employees were added to the team who had complementary skillsets to those of the original team. These new members focused on a new area for E-ISG, Quality Assurance. The original E-ISG team continues to grow with AssetWorks as they expand and improve the eQuip solution.
In 2018, E-ISG achieved two million U.S. dollars in sales and was the highest rated product in the government property management space. Since the acquisition, eQuip is now the #1 solution in the industry.
In the next year, Beser is looking forward to developing new business processes that help lower the cost of service delivery to customers with the support of the AssetWorks development team.
“Joining AssetWorks has impacted the growth of the eQuip platform by strengthening the product and making it more competitive in marketplace.” - Eric Beser, Founding CTO of E-ISG and Senior Development Director at AssetWorks