Descartes spends $4 million to acquire route planning provider Foxtrot
Deal complements company’s $30 million purchase of GreenMile with additional food and beverage sector coverage, Canadian firm says.
Canadian logistics technology provider Descartes Systems Group is back on the acquisition trail, announcing Thursday that it had spent $4 million to acquire Foxtrot Systems Inc., a California startup that provides route planning software.
San Francisco-based Foxtrot makes machine learning-based mobile route execution solutions. The firm says it supports real-time, autonomous dispatching services via a smartphone app for drivers, based on data drawn from platforms such as transportation management system (TMS), warehouse management system (WMS), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and territory planning software.
According to Ontario-based Descartes, Foxtrot’s product complements existing route planning and execution solutions and helps customers reduce last-mile costs, improve customer service, and improve route efficiency and on-time performance.
“Advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning are making it possible for us to leverage increasing amounts of ‘real world data’ to better inform our route planning and execution solutions,” Ken Wood, EVP of product management at Descartes, said in a release. “By combining with Foxtrot, we’re adding a team with deep domain expertise and proven technology that will help accelerate our efforts in this area.”
Descartes also said the acquisition enhances its $30 million takeover of GreenMile—a Florida firm providing cloud-based mobile route execution solutions—as both companies have extensive experience in the retail food and beverage distribution vertical.