TechFlash on Enroute Systems

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Wednesday, April 15, 2009 | By: John Cook

Things certainly have changed since the mid-1990s when Keith McCall worked on the ticket server technology for the Atlanta Olympic Games and L.L. Bean's first e-commerce site.

For one thing, a heck of a lot of products are now being sold online and shipped direct to consumers. While big companies such as Wal-Mart and Amazon.com have put systems in place to make sure shipping processes are efficient, McCall said many small and medium-sized companies have not. That's why he created Enroute Systems, a Sammamish software startup that helps businesses figure out how to save money on every day shipping costs.

Enroute  -- which has completed the initial close of an angel financing round from members of the Keiretsu Forum, Zino Society, Atlas Accelerator and others -- makes a software-as-a-service product that tells companies whether they are paying too much for shipping and how their costs compare to others in the industry. Its target customer is one that ships over 1,000 packages per month.

"(It) helps businesses first analyze how they could ship more effectively through a Web-based Dashboard," said McCall. "And then provides them with an end-to-end Transportation Management Solution that helps ship them packages more efficiently: with higher quality, lower cost, and less risk never before possible without significant investment in technology and infrastructure."

Enroute's customers include Zumiez, Theo Chocolate and others, with more than 750,000 packages managed through the system. It also is analyzing the shipping patterns for a major Pacific Northwest winery.

McCall previously served as CTO and founder of Seattle email management company Azaleos, which merged with M3 Technology Group last month. He continues to serve as an advisor to Azaleos, but left the CTO role at the end of last year to focus on Enroute.

Enroute employs eight people, with plans to hire in the areas of software development, sales and marketing. It has raised more than $250,000 in the angel round, with the possibility to top it off at $750,000.