An independent sales organization that specializes in restaurants recently signed up just about every full-service eatery in its medium-sized home town, a vendor says.
It happened in three or four months with the help of Swipely, a processor that emphasizes analytics it creates by combining information from transactions, the point of sale and social media, said Angus Davis, the Swipely's CEO.
"Nobody out there offers an alternative to our service," Davis claimed in a phone interview.
The intelligence the company provides can show a restaurant owner what menu items bring customers back, which servers need coaching to increase sales, what marketing efforts are paying off, which locations require immediate attention, and who the best customers are at each location and why.
ISOs and agents can use those and other examples of actionable data to sell their services based on value instead of price, Davis suggested.
Restaurant owners, who account for about 70% of Swipely merchants, can track the data and its meaning on a computer dashboard.
The company also uses the data it gathers and assesses to provide reports to the ISOs and other companies that promote the service to potential customers.
Customers generally sign a subscription agreement, and ISOs can collect residuals based on transaction volume, Davis said.
Account retention presents few problems because restaurant owners feel bound to the service because of the information they receive.
Swipely began promoting its services through ISOs, value-added resellers and other third parties about a year ago, and the channel now accounts for a third to a half of the company's new customers, he said.
With that boost from outside the company, Swipely has achieved a four-fold increase in business in the last year and now has a network of merchants with $4 billion in annual sales.
To illustrate how quickly the company is growing, Davis noted that Swipely began 2013 with a staff of 25 and is ending this year with 150 employees.
New hires include Chris Brubaker, former head of marketing at Demandforce, who has joined Swipely as vice president of marketing; and Dave Hoffman, former head of product management and marketing at Micros, who is serving Swipely as vice president of business development.
Looking to the future, Davis hopes to keep expanding the company with the help of an increasing number of ISOs.
"That's really a big part of how we're going to keep growing," he said of the ISO channel. "We're very eager to work with more ISOs."
