Beekeeper

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - April 15, 2016) - Beekeeper today announced that it has closed $5 million in venture capital financing. The seed round was led by FYRFLY Venture Partners with additional investment by b-to-v Partners, Polytech Ecosystem Ventures, and several highly regarded angel investors including Ariel Luedi and Niklas Ostberg. Beekeeper will use the new financing to accelerate growth for the company's employee communications platform among retail, hospitality and manufacturing leaders. Luedi and FYRFLY Venture Partners' General Partner and Co-Founder, Philipp Stauffer, have joined Beekeeper's board of directors, which also includes Beekeeper CEO, Cristian Grossmann, and Beekeeper CTO, Flavio Pfaffhauser.

Beekeeper transforms employee communication and engagement with a mobile-first solution designed specifically for service and blue-collar employees who work shifts, don't sit at desks, and are distant from corporate management -- both in mindset and location. The company's mobile employee communications platform fosters meaningful, two-way communication and collaboration with peers, managers and Human Resources (HR) leaders, including feedback and survey tools, while providing enterprise-grade scalability, security, and analytics. Beekeeper currently has 50 enterprise clients with end users in more than 100 countries on its platform. 

"Beekeeper connects unconnected workers to their employers in ways that are relevant, personal, and engaging," said Grossmann. "Unlike the dozens of enterprise messaging companies who are trying to increase the productivity of desktop workers and teams, we are helping companies increase meaningful engagement for the 70% of the global workforce who don't sit at desks all day. The results are immediate, measurable, and powerful as companies using Beekeeper rapidly boost efficiency and reduce costs and churn."

Engage Non-Desktop Workers As Employees Who Matter

Industry research estimates the enterprise collaboration market will reach $70.61 billion by 2019. This is set to further accelerate as more and more companies prioritize employee communication and engagement as a way to increase productivity and reduce turnover. To date, this effort has largely been focused on white-collar workers who sit at a desk all day and can easily receive a steady flow of digital information and recognition from their peers and managers.

The situation is radically different for service and blue-collar workers who have limited or no access to desktop computers and corporate email addresses. This large but overlooked segment of the U.S. workforce relies on outdated methods of communication, such as written notes, bulletin boards, stand-up meetings, and printed newsletters. This poses major problems for companies around compliance, scalability, and control -- and leaves employees feeling uninformed, disconnected, and undervalued.

The stakes are high: Gallup found that companies in the top 25 percent for engaged employees had 22 percent higher profitability, 28 percent less theft and 48 percent fewer safety incidents. Beekeeper is meeting the challenge with an innovative platform that uniquely connects retail, hospitality, and manufacturing leaders with non-desktop workers around the globe.

"Beekeeper is transforming employee communication and engagement for non-connected workers," said FYRFLY Venture Partners' Philipp Stauffer. "Service and blue-collar industries such as retail, hospitality and manufacturing can easily see 60 - 100% of their employees turn over within a year. Beekeeper is taking on a widespread, costly problem and is positioned to dominate with a strong executive team, world-class and international client base, and the vision to help companies reach and engage all workers as employees that matter. Further, Beekeeper is core to our investment thesis of 'data & intelligence' as the company deploys machine learning and AI to solve completely new and exciting use cases in enterprise communications."

The Beekeeper Platform: Award-Winning Employee Engagement

Beekeeper empowers companies to go beyond bulletin boards and email to communicate and engage with all employees within a powerful, secure mobile app. Companies using Beekeeper effectively foster real-time collaboration, engagement, and insight through:

• Peer-to-Peer Mobile Messaging : Rapidly exchange images, texts, and documents for faster decisions, responses, and operational communication -- no text or email needed.
• Communication Streams : Celebrate success, foster employee recognition, push new products and comply with health and safety information requirements - instantly across tens or hundreds of locations.
• Employee Mobile Surveys : Listen and gather structured feedback from the front lines to improve processes and products, as well as gain new understanding of employees' concerns and overall satisfaction.
• Advanced Analytics : Use actionable business intelligence to identify and involve influential employees, optimize content, and raise HR effectiveness.
• Smart Automation : Automate recurring communication flows for onboarding new people with a flexible and trigger based workflow system, or send automated messages to selected segments of your employees to promote process updates.

Beekeeper client FRHI Hotel and Resorts, a leading luxury hotel management company that operates more than 125 hotels and branded residential offerings globally under the Raffles, Fairmont and Swissôtel brands, recently received a prestigious Ragan's Best Employee Engagement Award for its work with Beekeeper:

• For the past two years, FRHI has connected over 40,000 employees from 125 hotels in 35 countries using FRHI Talk , a Beekeeper developed mobile communications solution.
• FRHI has experienced great success using FRHI Talk : according to a 2015 internal employee survey, 65 percent of FRHI Talk users surveyed answered, "thanks to FRHI Talk I feel more a part of FRHI than I did before," 78 percent of users said that reading the content on FRHI Talk makes them feel proud to work for FRHI and 61% claimed that thanks to FRHI Talk they are inspired to perform better at their job.

"Employee engagement is a means to retention and productivity rather than an end goal," continued Grossmann. "By empowering workers to engage in a two-way dialogue, companies can not only streamline information flow but also demonstrate that they are deeply invested in each employee's current and future success."

About Beekeeper

Beekeeper transforms employee communication and engagement with a mobile-first solution that features secure and scalable communication, engagement, and analytics. Non-desktop workers can now effectively collaborate with peers and engage management, as well as provide feedback, ideas, and best practices that deepen their connection with the entire organization. Companies using Beekeeper are able to boost employee retention and productivity, while significantly reducing costs and complexity of engagement initiatives. For more information, visit https://beekeeper.io/ .