Stockholm-based Quinyx, an AI-powered workforce management (WFM) platform, announced on Tuesday that it has acquired London and New York-based Concrete, an employee engagement, store operations, and task management platform.
Erik Fjellborg, founder and CEO of Quinyx, says, “This acquisition will power up our product offering. We are bringing an AI-powered workforce and task management solution to the market, giving organisations hiring frontline workers improvements across their operations. We are excited to see organisations revolutionise the way they optimise store operations and manage their frontline workers.”
“Working towards a bright future of retail”
Founded in 2004 by Tristan Rogers, Concrete is a mobile-first employee engagement and task management platform that enables brands to engage their store employees, streamline store operations, and increase the flow of communication between teams.
With a suite of features to cover all in-store processes, from visual merchandise approval to product recalls, Concrete claims to deliver brands a 3 to 5 per cent revenue increase at store level, while cutting employee churn by 50 per cent.
Concrete says the platform is used in more than 160 countries by more than 100 brands. Calvin Klein, Bath & Body Works, Victoria’s Secret, Tory Burch, and Superdry are among many global retailers the company already serves.
Tristan Rogers says, “Quinyx and Concrete are on a mission to solve two of today’s most pressing retail issues; staff retention and customer expectations. The coming together of our technologies is a natural step, and the synergies between workforce management, task management, store operations, and field communications are significant. Quinyx is at the forefront of the workforce management industry. The powerful combination of our technologies and talent will improve the operations of our customers and improve the lives of their frontline workers.”
Aim of this acquisition
Quinyx’s AI-powered workforce management software lets organisations automate, optimise and streamline their labour processes, while simultaneously empowering and engaging their employees. The platform also claims to help its customers, such as McDonald’s, Sysco, Domino’s, Maersk, IHG, and DHL, to dramatically improve productivity, drive business outcomes and enhance employee experience.
With the acquisition of Concrete, Quinyx will give organisations the ability to digitally connect field managers, frontline workers, and HQs to deliver ‘meaningful’ benefits across store performance, hourly workers’ flexibility, and engagement. Quinyx believes that this will ultimately bridge the gap between task execution, forecasting, and scheduling.
Erik Fjellborg, founder of Quinyx, says, “Concrete is a long-term partner of ours. And we’re huge fans of their product, their ethos and the way Tristan and his team go about their business. From the top down, Concrete has built an employee-centric culture that matches its market-leading product. They have a reputation for doing the right things for the right reasons and delivering on their promises—a big reason why they are a perfect fit for Quinyx.”
Concrete will remain its own entity within Quinyx. Founder Tristan Rogers will remain as Concrete’s CEO, sharing the Quinyx vision and mission to grow both brands under the Quinyx umbrella, while delivering solutions for frontline workers.
An AI-powered workforce management platform
Quinyx was founded in 2005 by Erik Fjellborg when working at McDonald’s. After seeing how difficult it was for managers to sort shifts manually, Fjellborg created Quinyx, a workforce management software, which ‘radically’ improved the industry.
McDonald’s loved Fjellborg’s solution and became Quinyx’s first customer. Currently, the company has more than 1000 companies as their customers.
A cloud-based, mobile-first workforce management software, Quinyx simplifies scheduling, time reporting, communication, task management, budgeting, and forecasting. The company claims to help organisations remain compliant, improve efficiency, reduce labour costs, and engage employees through advanced and flexible features.
Quinyx has offices in the US, the UK, Australia, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Its software has also been implemented globally in markets and regions such as Europe, North America, China, Japan, and Korea.
In October, 2020, Quinyx had acquired Amsterdam-based Widget Brain, a startup that uses artificial intelligence to automate and optimise workforce scheduling. The acquisition helped Quinyx to automate its labour optimisation process through Widget Brain’s AI-driven technology.
