Founded in Birmingham in 1976 to give concrete producers a competitive edge in product delivery, Command Alkon recently acquired yet another company as part of its ongoing drive to put forward the latest technologies in its corner of the heavy construction materials industry, which includes concrete, aggregates, cement and asphalt.
The addition of Marcotte Systems, based in Saint Bruno de Montarville, Quebec, is expected to accelerate Command Alkon’s ability to provide customers with next generation cloud applications and AI, says Emily Branum, chief legal officer/head of people.
“As a result of our company’s commitment to innovation and the 17 acquisitions over our 48-year history, Command Alkon has grown to offer a complete suite of software solutions for heavy building material suppliers, including concrete and asphalt producers and cement and aggregate suppliers across the globe,” Branum says.
In recent years the company has sought to transition its popular products from traditional on-premises software to cloud offerings with new capabilities, Branum says, in addition to creating a series of custom IoT hardware (smart devices) allowing its customers “to capture and leverage data to optimize operations.”
Branum points to the inspired leadership of company President and CEO Martin Willoughby, who rose to his current position in October 2021. Willoughby is the third CEO the company has had in its long history, she says. In its early days, founder Ken Robinson led the company as Command 1.0, followed by 16 years of the leadership of Phil Ramsey as Command 2.0, and now with Willoughby, Command 3.0. “Command 3.0 is focused on exceeding customer expectations by bringing to market leading-edge innovation with modern user experiences and excellence in support and training, all while being a best place to work for our employees and driving profitable growth,” Branum says.
One of Willoughby’s major staff initiatives has been the creation of a leadership academy, which focuses on company values and personal growth, Barnum says. The academy is open to all employees.
“Martin tells us you don’t have to be in leadership to be a leader,” she says. “Everyone is a leader, and we work together with the goal of providing a work environment that supports employee personal and professional growth and overall well-being. As Martin often says, every employee should have the opportunity to leave Command Alkon better than they came, if and when their season with us is complete.”
Command Alkon started as the Alkon Corp., founded from Robinson’s home in Birmingham. The company originally focused on digitizing and optimizing the dispatch of concrete delivery trucks, which was greatly needed by producers because of the perishable nature of wet concrete, Branum says. The company took on its current moniker after merging in 2000 with Command Data Inc. of Columbus, Ohio.
Thoma Bravo, one of the largest software-focused investors in the world, acquired Command Alkon in 2020 from its previous financial investor, Quilvest Capital Partners, which had owned the company since 2005. The Thoma Bravo private equity firm has a 40-plus year history and currently has approximately $142 billion in assets under management.
Branum has worked on about half of Command Alkon’s mergers. Those mergers have taken place during her 10-year tenure and three were made back-to-back after the transition to the company’s partnership with Thoma Bravo. “Command Alkon is the most acquisitive technology provider in our industry, and I fully expect that strategy to continue as a proven path to expanding our global footprint and accelerating innovation,” she says.
Until relatively recently, Command Alkon was headquartered in the Birmingham area, but the Covid pandemic motivated the company to transition much of its staff to remote work. “We went fully virtual with a few exceptions during the pandemic and learned that we work well in a virtual world, and our employees were still collaborating, innovating and thriving,” Branum says. “When we opened our Birmingham office back up at the end of the pandemic, very few employees wanted to return to the office.”
The company now has sublet its Birmingham location, Branum says, and works virtually with the exception of its Dublin, Ohio manufacturing and assembly facility and its international office locations in France, UK, Netherlands, India, Colombia, Brazil, Canada and Malaysia.
“The majority of our people and revenue are domestic but our global footprint is critical to supporting our largest customers that have technology needs around the world,” Branum says. “Our international locations offer products that are tailored to their home markets and enable Command Alkon to provide all customers with 24/7 ‘follow the sun’ support services.”
Of the company’s 620 employees, 119 reside in Alabama. “We don’t consider ourselves having a physical headquarters anymore since all our leadership is remote,” Branum says. “We use our Ohio address for a mailing address just since it is the only physical location we have left in the U.S. Someone picks up the mail there and scans it to the person it needs to go to, but we are trying to get away from traditional mail as much as possible.”
All the company’s custom smart device (IoT hardware) manufacturing and assembly is done at the Ohio location. Its hardware for concrete plant automation batch orders, for example, is assembled based on the client’s individual plant design and layout, Branum says. Its IoT hardware named Load Assurance includes a probe that mounts inside the drum of a concrete truck and measures certain properties of the wet concrete while in transit. The technology was acquired with IBB Rheology.
Command Alkon’s telematics tablets product using TrackIt came from its acquisition of FiveCubits. Telematics allows delivery vehicle data to be received and viewed real time. The tablets are provisioned at the Ohio plant before shipping.
Branum says Load Assurance, in conjunction with TrackIt, offers monitoring of fresh concrete properties throughout the delivery cycle, allowing “concrete producers to reduce idle truck time in the plant and at delivery by as much as 20 minutes per load. Additionally, with our material science data solution in use, one leading producer reported the ability to reuse 3 percent of returned concrete from its total production volume, equivalent to over 3,000 cubic yards. This reduced 1,215,000 pounds of CO2 emissions and generated substantial financial savings within the first 10 months.”
Command Alkon introduced it next-generation platform, Command Cloud, this year to provide greater operational improvements and to increase the potential for more AI-assisted, data-driven decision making, Branum says. “With its comprehensive and connected software and hardware solutions, Command Cloud offers a single cloud platform that manages all business processes, from inventory management to back office,” she says.
Cyber security, an industry-wide concern, is deeply embedded into Command Alkon products through its security teams, top-tier frameworks and best practices, Branum says. “Our ‘security-by-design’ approach embeds robust security measures into every phase of our product development life cycle,” she says. “This proactive strategy allows us to address potential vulnerabilities early, adapt continuously to emerging threats, and respond swiftly to incidents, ensuring our products remain secure and reliable for our customers.”
Kathy Haygood is a Hoover-based freelance contributor to Business Alabama.
This article appears in the September 2024 issue of Business Alabama.
