By LAURA LOREK
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
Pingboard Tuesday released a company organizational chart feature in its employee management software.
Customers demanded it, said Bill Boebel, co-founder and CEO of Pingboard.
“Going into this business I had no idea how important an organizational chart would be for companies,” he said. “It’s the number one feature they’ve asked for.”
For two years, Pingboard, based at Capital Factory in Austin, has created human resources management software featuring an employee directory and a vacation planner. The startup has more than 120 small to medium sized businesses as paying customers with close to 30,000 employees using the software on a daily basis, Boebel said. About 20 of its customers are international including HelloFresh in Berlin and Freelancer.com in Australia.
Pingboard, which raised $2.5 million in venture capital and has 11 employees, redesigned the employee directory and vacation calendar for the benefit of employees.
The organizational chart was the next logical feature, Boebel said. Right now, a lot of companies use a spreadsheet or manually draw an organization chart outlining who reports to whom, he said. Pingboard’s software creates a dynamic online organizational chart that makes it easy and accessible to everyone inside a company, he said.
“Companies are growing and that stuff gets outdated really fast,” Boebel said. “This provides informational transparency.”
Pingboard’s software works on iOS and Android mobile platforms. It’s designed for employees and it takes information that used to reside in folders in a company’s human resources department into easily accessible and actionable information that empowers employees, Boebel said.
Pingboard doesn’t charge companies with less than 15 employees to use its software. Its largest customer has 1,200 employees. The majority of its customers have a few hundred employees.
When startups get bigger than 100 people, the employees don’t know each other as well and they need a human resource management tool like Pingboard, Boebel said.
“It provides a layer of transparency to HR,” he said.
Freelancer.com uses Pingboard’s software to tag freelancers in its database by skill sets. That makes the database easily searchable. Adecco, a staffing agency, also tags people with skills, functional areas and regions.
Providing information in a fast growing startup environment allows companies to make decisions faster, Boebel said.
Boebel originally came up with the program because as managing director of Capital Factory he wanted something to keep track of the employees and members as the organization grew. Today, Capital Factory still uses Pingboard and has more than 1,000 members and employees listed in the directory.
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