Leverage Mobile Wins Entrepreneur Award
Industry: Technology
Leverage Mobile won one of only four awards funded through Salisbury University’s Philip E. And Carole R. Ratcliffe Foundation Shore Hatchery Program.
United States (PRUnderground) August 14th, 2014
With an eye to bolstering employment, the Baltimore-based foundation has committed $1 million to the Franklin P. Perdue School of Business at Salisbury University for grants and loan guarantees to start new businesses. According to the school’s dean, Dr. Bob Wood, it represents the largest gift given by the Baltimore-based foundation to date.
“An interesting aspect of the selection process is a Shark Tank-style interview,” said Dr. Wood. “In the first round, selected applicants make a one-minute presentation to the Shore Hatchery board, followed by a four-minute question-and-answer session about their proposals. In round two, finalists deliver a 10-minute presentation with a 15-minute Q-and-A. The process stimulates quick thinking and thorough preparation.”
On the same day, many Shore Hatchery participants also had the opportunity to audition for ABC-TV’s Shark Tank, holding its first small-market auditions at SU for the show’s sixth season. However, it didn’t take a reality TV producer to draw the attention of Ratcliffe’s judges to their business plans. In many cases, their stories were as compelling as anything on network television.
Before competing for the award, Leverage Mobile LLC, an IBM Premier Partner, debuted a new mobility service at IBM’s global conference Impact 2014 in Las Vegas, NV. The service allows organizations of all types to deploy mobile applications fully integrated into backend systems along with EMM (Enterprise Mobility Management) software all bundled as a service – so there are no up-front costs. This type of technology is not widely available to help “average” businesses connect mobile workers to the information they need to perform their jobs quickly and efficiently.
The core technology is based on state-of-the art IBM software, propriety software written by Leverage Mobile and is offered in a SaaS model hosted at a secure network operations center (NOC) in Salisbury. Using Leverage Mobile’s service, businesses can connect their mobile workers (managers, sales people, warehouse workers, inspectors, delivery personnel) with information housed in their back-end systems (ERP, Accounting, Order Fulfillment, CRM) using commercially available devices (smartphones, tablets, rugged handhelds) operating on widely used mobile operating systems (iOS, Android and Microsoft).
“Our CTO, Matt Smith, has really spearheaded our involvement with Salisbury University” said Doug Hawley, President of Leverage Mobile. “Matt was a judge of the school’s Richard Bernstein Achievement Award for Excellence Business Plan Competition earlier this year and we have hired a number of SU students as interns. We were honored to win this award and we intend continue our involvement with the University as we continue to grow our mid Atlantic based company.”
The Philip E. and Carole R. Ratcliffe Foundation was established to encourage the spirit of, and teach the skills for, entrepreneurship. Shore Hatchery’s 25-member board of directors, which includes Jim Perdue, President/CEO of Perdue Inc.; Mike Scarborough, founder of Scarborough Capital Management in Annapolis; Frank Gunion, owner of South Moon Under in Ocean City (Maryland’s 2013 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year); and attorney Benjamin Willey of Bethesda. Their foundation has a history of supporting entrepreneurial education and programs at college campuses including Anne Arundel Community College, the University of Baltimore and Mrs. Ratcliffe’s alma mater, Baldwin Wallace University in Ohio.
About Leverage Mobile – General
Leverage Mobile provides world-class mobile, integration and device management (MDM) solutions for organizations of all types and sizes – all in the cloud. The service significantly reduces – and often eliminates altogether – the need for software engineering, development tools, infrastructure resources and long term support for both hardware and software. Pre-packaged apps for rugged devices, smartphones and tablets, along with Leverage Mobile’s proprietary design tools make mobility fast and easy without the need for large, up-front capital investments.
