Office managers have to keep up with all the activity in an office, the employees, and pretty much everything else about the company — which is not an easy task.
Enter Pingboard, a service that seeks to become the most important resource for busy companies. The service, which launches to the public today, acts as a sort of universal company directory that shows every employee at the company as well as each person’s contact information and job description. Not exactly revolutionary, but the alternative is juggling spreadsheets, Google apps, multiple email inboxes, calendars, and a company wiki.
I had a chance to take a look at Pingboard and can see its advantages over communication-focused tools like Yammer or Convo. It essentially acts as a single location for anything you’d need to know that’s currently happening or about to happen within your office. You also have the option of grouping people into teams and tracking the activity of those teams.
“No one was really making a tool for the office managers, who when you think about it, have a lot of power when making important decisions that affect the business,” Pingboard founder Bill Boebel told VentureBeat. Making the office manager’s job easier often results in more progress for everyone, he said.
Boebel originally built Pingboard as a tool to help the office managers at Austin-based startup incubator/coworking space Capital Factory, where he is a founding partner. However, he quickly saw that an office operations management service is something few others were doing despite the need for better management.
Boebel said the team is currently working on adding new features that will allow employees to set status messages as well as track that activity.
Pingboard’s business model is pretty simple, with clients paying $1 per employee, per month. The service is free to use for those with 15 employees or less. The company also launched its Public API beta today, which will allow companies to customize Pingboard’s platform for their specific needs. The startup currently has 170 customers and is generating revenue.
Founded in 2013, the Austin, Texas-based startup has raised $1.25 million in total funding to date and has eight full-time employees.
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