Digital supply chain ecosystem Transflo announced Wednesday that it has added software-as-a-service veteran Cameron Eastman as CFO to help the company take its next phase 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 more aggressive M&A [mergers and acquisitions] strategy,” according to Phil Yates, a partner at the growth-focused equity firm.
Since then, the company has built a roster of supply chain, SaaS and financial services veterans to prepare for this aggressive investor strategy. Role changes included CEO Rene Krug (GlobalTranz), President and Chief Revenue Officer Bill Vitti (Truckstop.com), SVP Development Mario Duckett (MetaSource), VP IT and Infrastructure Scott Gray (Nielsen) and Chief Product Officer Justin Karol (Visa/Comdata/Fleetcor).
In an interview with FreightWaves, Eastman describes the new relationships with management and investors that influenced him to join the Transflo team, and acknowledges the strong relationships with carriers and brokers dedicated to the company that he believes will help motivate this hypergrowth.
This Q&A interview has been 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 field. Transflo has been around for 30 years and has a great product with plenty of room for expansion. I see a lot of growth in fuel and labor costs, and I see more opportunities to expand technology in this space to address these issues.
“I think automation is an area where Transflo’s services are a good fit. One of the areas we’re investing heavily in is our new Intelligent Automation platform, which is our new platform that will allow people to add artificial intelligence with machine learning to their back office data automation processes. There will be a big opportunity to use this data in the market to provide information to brokers, carriers and shippers.
“Overall, Transflo has me excited about the opportunities in the industry, especially in an industry that has backward technology. We have three strong proponents of capital [that] makes us excited about the future of this industry and future investment opportunities.”
FREIGHTWAVES: Are there other areas where Transflo can create complementary solutions, particularly in the financial services space?
EASTMAN: “I see the greatest value in an end-to-end technology platform that connects all points of the supply chain. We want to create a freight forwarding startup with data tracking, invoicing and waybill creation.
“Today we have 3.2 million mobile downloads from operators. We process $115 billion annually. So there is a lot of data that we can use to provide insight. We have eight of the top 10 brokers also using Transflo, and we have 81% of the top 250 carriers. So I think Transflo is uniquely positioned in the market to not only provide intelligent automation, but also provide really interesting data and market insights.”
FREIGHTWAVES: How do you think the recent restructuring might affect the value of the product for customers?
EASTMAN: “Our goal is to go into hyper-growth mode now. We have a lot of new ideas right now, but we also have Dan Burke, who has known the company for 25 years, and he’s our chief operating officer. We have new opportunities that we can expand and become a major player in the supply chain, as well as existing talent that can help drive our company forward.”
FREIGHTWAVES: Is there anything in particular about your role or your background that you’re looking forward to on your new team?
EASTMAN: “I bring a lot of deep technology and SaaS experience, as well as how to leverage investment strategy best practices to ultimately deliver greater value to our clients. You layer that on top of our investor relations and I think we have a winning team.
“Furthermore, I look forward to the convergence of carriers, brokers and factoring operations. All those parties coming together and then being able to serve each of them and give them a more automated solution is going to be powerful.”
FREIGHTWAVES: National Truck Driver Appreciation Week. In your new role, do you plan to provide better solutions to improve the operator experience?
EASTMAN: “Carriers are a strong part of the supply chain, and what I like about our existing solutions is that carriers recognize the value of Transflo because of our penetration of the industry’s leading carriers.
“We’re going to look at ways that we can continue to address the challenges for these trucking leaders, continue to address the cost growth issues and give them some alternatives to help their bottom line and give them a more automated solution moving forward.”
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https://www.freightwaves.com/news/transflo-continues-management-restructuring-with-new-cfo
