Supply chain digital ecosystem Transflo announced Wednesday it has added software-as-a-service veteran Cameron Eastman as CFO to help position the company for its next stage of product development.
In December, Transflo received a minority equity investment from Bregal Sagemount with aspirations to “accelerate [its] go-to-market engine” and “move forward with a more aggressive M&A [mergers and acquisitions] strategy,” according to Phil Yates, partner at the growth-focused equity firm.
Ever since, the company has built up a roster of supply chain, SaaS and financial services veterans to prepare for that aggressive investor strategy. Role changes included CEO Renee Krug (GlobalTranz), president and chief revenue officer Bill Vitti (Truckstop.com), senior vice president of growth Mario Duckett (MetaSource), vice president of IT and infrastructure Scott Gray (Nielson) and chief product officer Justin King (Visa/Comdata/Fleetcor).
Related: Transflo bringing in industry veterans to spur growth
In an interview with FreightWaves, Eastman describes the new leadership and investor relationships that influenced him to join the Transflo team and acknowledges the large carrier and broker relationships dedicated to the company that he believes will help motivate that hypergrowth.
This question-and-answer interview was edited for clarity and length.
FREIGHTWAVES: What attracted you to this position at Transflo?
EASTMAN: “I like to find companies that are well positioned in their industry. Transflo has been around for 30 years and has a great product and many opportunities to expand that product. I see a lot of rising costs for fuel and labor, and I see more opportunities to expand technology into this space to solve those problems.
“I think automation is an area where Transflo’s service fits nicely. One of the areas that we are investing heavily in is in our new platform, Intelligent Automation, which is our new platform that will allow people to add machine-learning AI to their back-office automation data processes. There is going to be a big opportunity to leverage that data in the marketplace to provide insights to brokers, carriers and shippers.
“Overall, what got me excited about Transflo was industry opportunity, especially in an industry that has laggard technology. We have three strong equity backers [that] gets us excited about the future of this industry and future investment opportunities.”
FREIGHTWAVES: Are there other areas you could see Transflo building more solutions for, especially within your background of financial service?
EASTMAN: “Where I see the biggest value is an end-to-end technology platform connecting all the supply-chain dots. We want to provide a shipping startup shipping with data tracking, invoicing and bills of lading creation.
“Today we have 3.2 million mobile downloads from carriers. We have $115 billion of freight spend processing annually. So there’s a lot of data that we can use to provide insights. We have eight of the top 10 brokers using Transflo as well, and we have 81% of the top 250 carriers. So I think Transflo is uniquely positioned in the marketplace to not only provide Intelligent Automation but also provide really interesting data and insights into the marketplace.”
FREIGHTWAVES: How do you think the recent restructuring could impact the product value to customers?
EASTMAN: “Our goal is to move into hypergrowth mode now. We have a lot of new ideas now, but we also have Don Burke, who has known the company for 25 years, and he is our chief operations officer. We have new opportunities we can expand on and become a big player in the supply chain, as well as existing talent that can help move our company forward.”
FREIGHTWAVES: Is there anything in particular in your role or your expertise that you are looking forward to with your new team?
EASTMAN: “I bring to the table a lot of deep tech and SaaS experience and how to leverage best practices investment strategy to ultimately offer more value to our customers.You overlay that with our investor relationships and I think we have a winning team.
“Also, I am looking forward to bringing carriers, brokers and factoring operations closer together. All of those parties coming together and then being able to service each one of them and give them a more automated solution will be powerful.”
FREIGHTWAVES: It is National Truck Driver Appreciation Week. In your new role, do you plan to provide better solutions to improve the carrier experience?
EASTMAN: “Carriers are a strong part of the supply chain, and what I like about our existing solutions is that the carriers recognize the value that Transflo brings by the amount of penetration we have into the top carriers in the industry.
“We are going to be looking at ways we can continue to solve problems for those trucking leaders, continue to address rising costs and give them some alternatives to help their bottom line and give them a more automated solution moving forward.”
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