Theatro
What they do: Theatro provides an “intelligent personal assistant and voice-controlled mobile app platform” for employees in brick-and-mortar retail, manufacturing, and hospitality.
Problem they solve: Enterprises with large staffs of hourly employees have yet to realize the massive productivity gains from smart mobile devices that enterprises with large staffs of knowledge workers are achieving.
The problem is that hourly service and manufacturing workers tend to be slowed down if required to carry a smartphone or tablet while doing their jobs because they need their hands free and their eyes focused on their work. Moreover, most hourly employees don’t have a company email or voicemail, and in many states, hourly labor laws make it difficult for them to access necessary company information when off the clock.
How they solve it: Theatro’s “heads up, hands free” mobile solution provides a software suite of productivity and communication applications, delivered as SaaS and designed to optimize employee, sales, and operational performance.
#Big50-2017 startup Theatro's heads up-hands free mobile platform for retail boosts productivity by as much as 30%. https://wp.me/p330ZZ-jM Share on XThe platform connects employees to one another, to headquarters, and to enterprise information systems. Using Theatro, employees can find each other by name, expertise, or even their location anywhere on premises and speak directly into their earbud by tapping the device, and saying “Hello [coworker’s name].”
Their suite of workforce productivity applications operate in conjunction with an enterprise’s order management system, allowing for real-time inventory or price checks.
With Theatro, employers are given insights into what their employees do, how they work as a team, and what makes them successful. The Employee Analytics application measures social interaction data to understand what’s impacting productivity and who the top performers are. It then performs predictive analytics, enabling businesses to create a streamlined repeatable model that maximizes productivity.
Theatro says that customers are using its platform to decrease customer wait times, connect regional leaders to their teams, and boost employee productivity by as much as 10-30%.
Headquarters: Dallas, TX
CEO: Chris Todd, who was previously the CEO of AppTrigger.
Founded: 2012
Funding: $8.8M from Khosla Ventures angel investors.
Competitors include: Motorola Solutions and Zebra Technologies.
Customers Include: The Container Store, Cabela’s, and Bass Pro Shops. New customer wins since the last report include Neiman Marcus and Fry’s Electronics.
Why they’re in the Big 50-2017: Theatro is a two-time winner! Last year, the startup did very well in Big 50 online voting. This year, Theatro added two major customers, deploying their solution nationally with Neiman Marcus and Fry’s Electronics. Those are two big wins, big enough that there’s no way we could leave them out of the Big50-2017.
