Vigillo Acquired by Driver Safety Firm
This story appears in the Feb. 27 print edition of Transport Topics.
Driver risk-management firm SambaSafety has acquired Vigillo, a provider of data analytics software designed to help carriers manage their performance under the federal Compliance, Safety, Accountability program.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
The merged company plans to offer a single dashboard that brings together SambaSafety’s data on driver motor vehicle records and Vigillo’s CSA Daylight Suite to provide a more comprehensive view of driver safety and compliance.
That combined offering will be available to select customers in March.
“We will combine data and software and provide a complete picture of drivers’ performance both on and off the clock,” said Richard Crawford, CEO of SambaSafety. “For [Department of Transportation] regulated fleets, pre-hire and post-hire driver records can now be synchronized into driver qualification files to ensure that safe, policy-compliant drivers are on the road.”
While SambaSafety and Vigillo plan to integrate core functions such as sales, marketing, finance, engineering and support, the combined company will continue to go to market under the Vigillo name in the trucking sector, Crawford said.
SambaSafety, headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico, also provides driver risk-management software to other industries that employ drivers, including sales and field service fleets.
Steve Bryan, who founded Vigillo in 2007, will remain president of the Portland, Oregon- based company.
“Our mission and vision was, and remains, to push the boundaries of data analytics to give safety professionals in this vital industry the tools they need to save lives,” Bryan said. “This combination with SambaSafety will only serve to accelerate that mission.”
SambaSafety and Vigillo share several key qualities that make the companies a natural fit together, Bryan said.
“We’re both very technology- driven companies,” he said, adding that both utilize software-as-a-service platforms that are highly compatible with each other.
The acquisition closed Feb. 17.
On a conference call with trucking journalists, Crawford said the transportation sector remains “underserved” by data analytics and workflow automation, particularly in the area of driver management.
“Overall, we think the industry has underinvested in technology related to data and software workflows,” he said.
Moving forward, SambaSafety aims to provide a “common, ubiquitous platform” that integrates with other data and services offered by partner companies, Crawford said.
Last year, Boston-based private equity firm ABRY Partners took a majority stake in SambaSafety. While terms of the agreement were not released, the investment was expected to accelerate SambaSafety’s growth and acquisition strategy, the company said at the time.
