News
Robinson software maker to double size
August 17, 2007 - By Kim Leonard, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
A Robinson company that sells productivity improvement software to Fortune 500 companies plans to double its size in the next two years, using millions in new financing.
KCRS Inc. has evolved in its 12-year history from a management consulting company that refined business practices for efficiency to a provider of software packages that track and analyze absenteeism and productivity for companies with tens of thousands of workers.
Founder and President Patrick Kalnas wouldn’t disclose the amount of capital the company received, but said Thursday it will go toward expanding the 41-member work force and developing sales and marketing efforts.
Mel Pirchesky, CEO of Eagle Ventures in Shadyside, said he assembled millions for KCRS from “angel” investors who help early-stage businesses.
Many big corporations come up with their own ways to track work time and productivity, but KCRS “is the only company that I found that does what they do,” said Pirchesky, who has raised more than $50 million in angel financing, mainly for local ventures. Essentially, KCRS’s software known as PIHMS® gives companies an easy, Web-based way to look at when and how many of its employees are absent, even in multiple locations around the world, Kalnas said.
PIHMS® — short for Productivity Improvement and Health Management Systems, and patented in February — then charts the way toward getting the workers back on the job.
Someone with back problems, for example, may have been lifting too much at work and taken time off to recuperate. The software can help to analyze his job requirements and make adjustments, or even find another job that he could do.
While piloting the software with a customer in the United Kingdom, “I was most surprised that the union really embraced this, because we thought of it as a management system,” Kalnas said. Still, PIHMS® levels the playing field for workers, he said, creating standard systems for managing what KCRS calls a company’s “human capital.”
KCRS doesn’t specify its sales figures or customers, Kalnas said, but the company is profitable and has even repaid money received from Innovation Works, the state-funded, Pittsburgh-based agency that helps early-stage technology companies.
