Ford has shut down VIIZR, a software-as-a-service company that, along with Salesforce, created an app to help tradespeople like plumbers, locksmiths and electricians schedule field appointments, send invoices and manage customers, TechCrunch has learned. About 40 people who worked at VIIZR were laid off.
VIIZR, which was announced in December 2021, was an independent company majority owned by Ford with Salesforce as a minority investor. His goal, at the time, was to build one of many digital tools that would catapult the automaker’s commercial vehicle and services business, Ford Pro, to revenue of about $45 billion by 2025.
VIIZR is no longer part of that plan.
Ford spokeswoman Catherine Hargett confirmed that the automaker ended its investment in VIIZR and discontinued the product on Nov. 1 due to a lack of customer demand and prioritization of its telematics, fleet management software. and cargo productivity, where demand is strong and growing.
Ford Pro is on track to reach $45 billion in revenue, a goal CEO Jim Farley noted during a January 2022 event that highlighted the involvement of VIIZR and Salesforce. Ford Pro generated $42.7 billion in revenue in the first nine months of 2023, a 22% increase from the same period last year, according to the latest company earnings. Subscriptions to Ford Pro software, which includes services that help a company manage fleets, charge its electric vehicles, data analytics and telematics, reached 476,000 in the third quarter, up nearly 50% year over year.
While Ford Pro’s business is booming, the software-as-a-service application has encountered more competition and limited demand.
However, when VIIZR first launched, Farley and Salesforce Chairman and Co-CEO Marc Benioff touted its potential at a January 2022 event in Napa, California, attended by TechCrunch. VIIZR used Salesforce’s field service product, which provides software designed for mobile workforces, to create its app. Ford, citing market research from Salesforce and Gartner, noted that the field service management market was estimated at $3 billion annually in the U.S. and was expected to double over the next six years as Changes in consumer behavior caused by COVID would drive high demand. for exchanges.
The premise was that dealers, many of whom might drive Ford vans or trucks, were already using their vehicles as a mobile office. So why not capitalize by selling them digital tools like an app that makes their job easier so that, as Farley said at the time, “they don’t have to run their business with sticky notes?”
“One of the big customers of these trucks are these professional drivers; They can be first responders, contractors, electricians, plumbers, and a lot of these people work directly on their truck,” Benioff told TechCrunch on the sidelines of the 2022 event. “You’ll see that they’ve reconfigured the truck, so that it has a desk and you don’t even have You have to get off the truck. So the idea that we could then provide applications for those professionals to achieve higher levels of productivity made a lot of sense and then it would also be better integrated into vehicle services.”
The market for apps like the one VIIZR was developing has filled up and evolved rapidly in the two years since the company’s launch, according to Hargett, who noted that the app was related to job scheduling and automating administrative and administrative tasks. not directly linked to vehicles or management. commercial vehicles, which is the focus of Ford Pro.
While VIIZR has been discontinued, Salesforce still provides business software to Ford Pro.
