Transfinder Corp. reported $28.9 million in revenue in 2022, a 24 percent increase from $23.3 million in 2021, representing 25 years of consecutive year-over-year revenue growth.
Transfinder, which provides school transportation management and logistics solutions to about 2,300 school districts throughout North America also landed 192 school districts as clients, with more than half (53 percent) leaving competitors’ products.
Driving the growth in 2022 beyond the number of new clients added was existing clients moving from Transfinder’s earlier routing solution, Routefinder Pro, to the company’s award-winning, browser based Routefinder PLUS, which was released in 2020. PLUS has quickly become the industry leader. Also key to Transfinder’s 2022 success was the increase in clients buying Transfinder’s parent app, Stopfinder, and having their data hosted in the cloud, which increased 4 percent and 17 percent, respectively.
Today, one in 3.5 students are taking a school bus that is routed using Transfinder technology, including 23.4 million students routed using Routefinder PLUS, up from 5.6 million students in 2021. Transfinder’s PLUS clients traverse 25.5 million miles every day. That’s up from from 10.2 million miles in 2021.
“While I am thrilled to hit this record 25th year of straight growth, in many ways, Transfinder is just hitting its stride,” said Transfinder President and CEO Antonio Civitella. “Every single team within Transfinder contributed to this record revenue. With districts facing tighter budgets, driver shortages and other challenges, we have become a more crucial partner to more schools than ever before. We take this responsibility seriously and it shows in every aspect of our company.”
Civitella added: “Last year I said that I believed our industry needs our solutions and services more than ever. I believe that is even more true today.”
Transfinder’s parent app, Stopfinder, which allows parents to track their child’s bus in real-time as well as have two-way communication with district officials, continued to gain traction. In 2022, 14.6 million times parents and guardians were notified of their child’s bus location. Currently, 500,000 parents are using the Stopfinder app. Another 3 million announcements were sent to parents via the Stopfinder app, such as updates regarding snow days.
Meanwhile, Formfinder, imbedded in Routefinder PLUS, has seen a spike in usage. Twenty-five percent of Transfinder’s clients are using Formfinder, a tool that allows users to digitize or create any form, to track student discipline issues. In addition, another 25 percent are using Formfinder for payroll.
Transfinder continues to add to its headcount. Currently, the tech company has 174 employees globally, with 111 in the United States, the bulk of which are in New York’s Capital Region. That’s up from 143 globally and 100 in the United States in 2021.
“If we keep this pace, we’ll close this year with more than 200 employees globally,” Civitella said. “There’s a ripple effect. When you increase the number of solutions available and the number of clients, you have to increase support and services. And it starts with the development team creating solutions that we know our clients need – even if they didn’t know they needed them.”
Another 2022 highlight was being named a Best Place to Work by the Albany Business Review, a Top Workplace by the Times Union, and a Best Company to Work for in New York State by the New York State Society for Human Resource Management.
“It is rewarding to receive these awards because they are based on anonymous surveys that our team fills out,” Civitella said. “The number one word our employees used at a recent meeting to describe why they are #TransfinderProud was ‘teamwork.’ That’s a great word to describe the Transfinder way of doing things. Everyone pitches in to help where they can.”
Highlights in 2022 include:
- 25th consecutive year of annual revenue growth;
- 192 new clients;
- Named a Best Place to Work, Top Workplace and Best Companies to Work for in New York State;
- Continued to host monthly “Best Practices” webinars with industry leaders on navigating school transportation during these challenging times;
- 8,157 training sessions with clients, up 20 percent;
- Product installations, up 26 percent; and
- Transfinder continued to see an increase in clients choosing to have their data hosted on the cloud, with 70 percent of its clients now being hosted.
“In 2023 we will be expanding into other markets outside of school transportation,” Civitella said. “However, we know there are still 7,500 school districts that are not using our solutions that could benefit from our technology. Most of them have no routing software at all. There’s still lots of room to grow within the school space.”