Aggressive hiring goals are common in the tech industry, but few companies go through growth sprints like the one Logistyx Technologies just had. The Rolling Meadows-based company, whose software helps businesses cut shipping costs, recently completed a hiring initiative called “90 people in 90 days.”
“We more than doubled our headcount at Rolling Meadows and will probably triple it by the end of the first quarter,” said CEO Geoffrey Finlay. “The reason why this was done in such a compressed time frame was because of increased lead generation. It was really pure customer demand.”
We more than doubled our headcount at Rolling Meadows and will probably triple it by the end of the first quarter.”
Logistyx Technologies was formed in 2017 by the merger of three companies: Agile Network, Pantechnik International and Schaumburg-based Advanced Distribution Solutions, Inc. All three companies were in the transportation management space, and with the merger, the newly formed Logistyx Technologies set its sights on moving into the automated shipping management software market.
“What our product allows customers to do is select the best courier at the best rate for their particular shipment,” said Finlay. “If you’re shipping 10 pots of honey a week, that’s not too difficult. But when you ship 80,000 packages an hour, as some of our customers do, that’s got to be a highly automated and very clever process.”
Logistyx Technologies has a network of over 8,500 carriers that deliver to 190 countries, including smaller companies that help shipping giants like USPS, DHL and FedEx with last-mile logistics in far-flung locales.
In addition to software, the company also provides shipping-centric hardware solutions like label printers, smart barcode scanners and dimensioning systems for weighing and measuring objects.
A backlog of leads kick-started Logistyx’s recent hiring spree. Bringing on more salespeople meant closing more deals, which in turn created a need to grow all the other teams associated with the business.
“We went from four regional sales people to 12 and added two more in Canada,” said Finlay. “Now we need probably 50 implementation engineers, 20 support people and so on and so on. It ripples all the way through the business.”
In addition to helping the company keep up with the flood of new leads, the hiring sprint also provided an opportunity for Logistyx to increase gender parity on its team.
“This industry used to be fairly male-dominated,” said Finlay. “What I’m quite pleased about is that a significant number of our new recruits have been women who have been hired for fairly senior roles.”
In addition to hiring, Logistyx is gearing up to release a new version of its flagship transportation management execution software, TME3, that supports a broader range of functionality. The company is also preparing to add another floor to its office in Rolling Meadows.
