This year is a big one for Ento, and after a challenging 2020 we’re now firmly back into growth mode!
We kicked off the year with a $5 million Series B capital raise to support expanding into new regions, doubling the size of the team, and of course investing heavily in product development. Now that we’re at the half-way mark we wanted to share some of the highlights of the year so far, along with a taste of things to come.
So far this year…
Product development
We’ve released a range of enhancements and upgrades so far this year, including:
Multi-brand support
Have a couple of brands under your umbrella? Want to customise the look and feel for various teams? This functionality lets you use different custom logo, colours and signatures across different parts of your account.
Shift-locking
Does your roster include fixed shifts that should not be changed or deleted? Shift locking now allows you to restrict these from being adjusted to ensure any necessary conditions are met.
Stability and performance improvements
We’ve released a large number of changes in recent weeks to improve the overall speed and stability of the platform, and have plenty more to come.
And we’re only just getting warmed up…
Supercharged hiring
Big plans require great people, and we’ve been busy growing the Ento team across all parts of the business. Here are some of the amazing people who have joined the team over the past 6 months:
| Robin West – Front End Developer Robbie Sita – Mid-Market Account Executive Ella Bourke – Customer Support Expert Stefan Carlton – Senior Back End Engineer Oliver Salisbury – Head of Talent Acquisition Angus Shirriffs – Technical Solutions Consultant Peter Vigilante – Technical Solutions Consultant Jonathon Upton – Senior Back End Developer Mallory Martel – Head of Marketing John Court – Head of Architecture Vikram Prabhu – Technical Solutions Consultant Philip Rochecouste – Technical Solutions Consultant Natalya Pollard – Head of Sales Girish Bhatta – Data Scientist |
Nascent McComber – Enterprise SDR Ashwin Ram – Mid-Market Account Executive Bar Galon – Head of Product Kayta Hackman – Content Marketer Nathan Black-Otterspoor – Senior Back End Engineer Matt Dwyer – Technical Solutions Consultant Mitch Stewart – Front End Lead Shebana Munaf – Mid-Market SDR Denzel Viluan – Mid-Market SDR Rumana Rahim – Senior Back End Engineer Murtaza Zulfiqar Husain – Enterprise AE Alison O’Connor – Senior Account Manager David Tanaskovic – Technical Solutions Consultant Geoff Noy – Technical Solutions Consultant |
Hello Sydney
Ento has always been proudly headquartered in Melbourne VIC, but we’re now excited to officially expand interstate. Our Surry Hills office opened in April and is now home to seven of the Ento team (and counting)! The Sydney office not only opens up a bigger talent pool for Ento so we can continue to hire the best people Australia has to offer, but also means we can better serve current and prospective customers outside of Victoria.
Coming soon…
North America here we come!
Overseas travel may not be back on the cards just yet, but that isn’t stopping Ento from expanding North. During the second half of 2021 we’ll be formally establishing a presence in North America including opening a new office in Toronto and hiring local team members across all major functions. Among other things, this will mean extending our standard Customer Support hours to full 24/7 coverage worldwide.
Further product development
We have ambitious plans for the Ento product over the next six months. Here’s some of the areas we’ll be investing in heavily:
Multi-break support for shifts
You’ve spoken and we’ve listened. It will soon be possible to add multiple paid and unpaid breaks to a single shift, allowing greater control and visibility over when breaks are taken.
Advanced tasking
This is a big one, bringing an entirely new layer of depth and flexibility to rostering in Ento, and opening up a huge range of new use-cases across almost every sector. This functionality will allow a single shift to be split into multiple sections – each with their own roles, tasks, cost centres, pay rules, and independent timesheets. We’re incredibly excited about this workstream and will be sharing more information over the coming months.
Timesheets on the Manager Go app
The Manager Go app will be expanded to support the ability to edit and authorise timesheets, allowing managers to review and approve tasks when and as it suits you best.
Hours-based roster budgets
Ento has always had strong support for helping businesses manage roster costs against budgets, but we’ll soon be adding support for setting budgets in hours as well as dollars. This means more options for managing rosters to a target, no matter which metric is relevant to your business.
Xplor API integration for Childcare
We’ve penned an exclusive partnership with Xplor to bring our Childcare clients and the wider industry an integrated solution to manage compliance and profitability. The integration will bring booking and attendance data into Ento to drive the right ratios and control your cost of bookings.
FastTrack integration V2
Based on feedback from our initial cohort of customers, we’re working on additional functionality to make our integration with FastTrack even more flexible and powerful.
More stability and performance improvements
We’ll continue to focus on increasing overall system speed and performance during the second half of the year. While these upgrades will be frequent and incremental rather than released in one ‘big bang’, you’ll likely notice improvements to things like page load times, ‘costing’ of shifts on the roster, import/export performance and general system-wide responsiveness.
As you can tell, we’ve had a pretty big year so far!
With any change comes an adjustment period for all involved – customers included. We appreciate your ongoing support and look forward to continuing this journey with you as we enhance, innovate and expand Ento even further. Keep an eye on this space for updates – there’s so much more coming your way soon! In the meantime, feel free to reach out if you have any questions.