Local employee engagement software firm raises $15M in capital

Emplify Inc., a Fishers-based software-as-a-service firm, has secured $15 million in growth capital, the company announced Thursday.

It’s the second round of capital secured by the company, which focuses on human resources-related products. Company founders Santiago Jaramillo and Adam Weber will retain ownership stakes in the company and continue to lead its operations.

The company, which was founded in 2016 and has more than 60 employees, raised $7.5 million in September 2018. The latest round brings its total capital raise to $22.5 million.

The most recent round of funding was led by New Jersey-based growth equity investor Edison Partners. Prior investors including Indianapolis-based Allos Ventures, St. Louis-based Cultivation Capital, Mark Hill, Bob Davoli of Boston-based Gutbrain Ventures and 4G Ventures managing director Bill Godfrey also participated in the round.

Emplify, which counts Harley-Davidson, Crew Car Wash, Ivy Tech State College and Atlanta-based Terminus among its clients, plans to invest the funds into its core product, service innovation and into expanding its sales and marketing teams to drive growth, company officials said

The company said it expects to at least double its workforce in the next two years.

“Emplify is scientifically tackling the most pertinent issue employers face today: building a culture that attracts, engages and retains talent,” Ryan Ziegler, general partner at Edison Partners, said in a written statement. “Defined business outcomes [that] are tied to measurable business improvements that Emplify’s customers experience in less than 12 months speak for themselves.”

In addition to the capital raise, Emplify announced the hiring last month of sales veteran George Tate as senior vice president of sales. During his 12 years as vice president of sales at Schaumburg, Illinois-based Paylocity Corp., the company grew from a $17 million private business to a public firm with a $5.5 billion market cap. During that time, he expanded the sales team from five to more than 270 sales representatives.

Emplify combines the use of its software with human data analysis and expert coaching, Jaramillo said. Its software uses employee surveys to score how an employer performs across 17 employee engagement drivers such as autonomy, feedback and psychological safety. There are a number of ways the employer can segment the data, including by department, manager, generation, gender and role.

An “employee engagement Strategist”—a role akin to a data analyst and executive coach hybrid—helps business managers analyze survey results and build an action plan to measurably improve engagement, he added.