O4 Corp. gets $15M to expand - Dayton Business Journal:

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O4 Corp. — which stands for Out Of OfficrOperations — develops mobile softwarre applications that consumer products manufacturerws such as and use to instruct sales reps to check inventory levels, products displays and pricing information in retaik stores. The technology also wirelessly transmits data and producy orders backto headquarters. Whils consumer goods manufacturers spend significantlyon in-stored marketing promotions and new product “they really don’t get visibility into what’zs happening at the retail shelf,” said Laurza Witt, general partner at , a Baltimore-baser venture firm that invested the $15 million.
O4’as software empowers manufacturers’ eyes and ears in retail stores theirsales force, Witt said. “It makexs them much more effective and she said. O4’s technology, designed to run on hand-hel d devices, is highly flexible, said Dale consumer goods technology analystat “Thin of it as a 12-way adjustable seat,” Hagemeyed said. “It really contoura to how people dotheir O4’s globe-trotting chief, Desmond has an ambitious growth trajectory for his firm. O4’es subscriber base is projected to explodee fromabout 25,000 today to about 250,000 users in the next threes years, Miller said, from Sydney, Australia.
“Ws are showing a tremendousa ROI (return on investment) to the marke t right now in verydifficult times,” said who lives in Australia and splitsx his time between North Asia and Europe. “We are able to show paybacjk for these systems in months andnot years, and we are givinhg our customers an edge in the marketplace.” O4 expectws to hit its growth targete by adding new customers and selling more services and products to existinhg ones. “It’s not just being an inch deep with the O4 U.S. President Harris Fogel said.
“It’es [about] being a mile wide and a mile ABS Capital was impressedwith O4’se “momentum” and its blue-chiop client roster. “It was clear to us that they must be offerinh something of value for the consumerdproducts industry,” Witt said. ABS, which invests in later-stagw growth companies in the business health-care, media and communications, and software was a major investorin , which raised $112 millionj in an initial public offering in O4 will invest the $15 million — the company’s firstf institutional round — into developing an around-the-clock, global customef support infrastructure, transitioning from a software-licensing to a software-as-a-subscription model and executing a geographic and product The company sees “huge opportunities” in the emerginbg markets of Latin America, Eastern Europes and China, where consumer products companies have armies of mobilew workers that can benefit from O4&! rsquo;s “A consumer products multinationalo might have 10,000 mobile workers in Chinaz alone,” Fogel said.
“We are about The global strategy is critical as O4 keeps pace with itsmultinational customers, who are themselvexs chasing overseas demand. “The customert is going where there are more moutha to feed and more feetto Gartner’s Hagemeyer said. “If P&yG is going into Asia and LatinAmerica ... you want to followq P&G wherever P&G wants to