If you rely on technology for environmental, health, and safety (EHS) operations, environmental compliance and Tier II reporting for EPCRA and other regulatory requirements, we’d like to think you’ve heard of Encamp by now. If not, to fill you in, we’re all about environmental compliance innovation. We introduced a first of its kind end-to-end technology and software for compliance and reporting in 2018, and it’s created a buzz ever since.
Now, we’re continuing to turn the buzz way up.
New Series B funding
In April 2021, we were thrilled to announce Encamp had raised $12 million in Series B funding led by OpenView. The funding was supported with participation from Encamp investors High Alpha Capital, Allos Ventures, and IU Ventures, who participated in an earlier funding round in April 2020 (co-led by High Alpha and Allos). The new investment is being used to fuel our technology-driven system’s ongoing innovation and add resources in engineering, customer support and compliance, sales, recruiting, and other areas.
Naturally, the new funding was great news for Encamp and our future. But it’s been even better news for our industry and every environmental professional and compliance specialist who craves a solution that makes their job easier. Here’s why.
OpenView is respected for helping fast-growing software companies reach their potential with what it terms product-led growth in the “end user era.” Put simply, OpenView believes purchasing decisions for technology and software should focus on end users and not “How will this product help our business’s bottom line?” Instead, the primary decision-making criteria is “How will this product help someone in their day-to-day work life?”
Which brings us to a day in the life of an environmental professional — our technology’s core end users — and why we created Encamp in the first place. (Read more about our journey.)
Customer-driven solutions for environmental professionals
If you have to deal with environmental compliance every day and issues like Tier II reporting every year, we know what you’re up against. Most of us at Encamp come from environmental compliance and EHS backgrounds, and we always asked the same question you do.
“Why are we using spreadsheets to manage all this information and file compliance reports?”
In 2017 when we first envisioned Encamp, we knew software and digital innovation had been making businesses more efficient for a long time. Digital transformation was already well underway, and it was providing measurable value in data-centered industries like healthcare, manufacturing and especially retail (think Amazon).
So our thinking was, let’s bring the same innovation and digital dynamic to environmental compliance. The best way to improve an environmental professional’s workday would be to digitize compliance data to make it easier to manage, validate and access, and to automate how the information is compiled and reported to state and federal regulatory agencies.
Our Mission: Encamp is on a mission to increase compliance efficiencies across top organizations… to create a world where good for business can equal good for the environment.
Just as we planned, Encamp now transforms compliance programs and human processes into a technology-driven system that lays the foundation for accurate and ongoing environmental compliance. And with our growing teams of compliance and software experts, we help companies centralize their compliance information for applicable facilities, set up continuous data collection, and automate getting that information to the right reporting systems in the right formats.
Encamp’s Guided Environmental Compliance method
As it does for many other industries, digital transformation brings a simplified method to data management and reporting for environmental compliance. And on a path that blends digitization with our high-tech software and high-touch support from Encamp’s own team of compliance experts, we guide enterprises and their environmental teams to a simpler process and consistently successful outcomes for compliance.
Appropriately, we call our method Guided Environmental Compliance. Along with our technology-driven system, the approach compels enterprises and their EHS and compliance operations to adopt digital transformation technologies and practices, which enables them to then take five distinct steps toward simplifying compliance program areas.
- Establish a strong foundation for compliance data.
- Create a continuous data collection process.
- Automate updates and notifications to keep facilities in compliance on an ongoing basis.
- Confidently file compliance reports to various regulatory agencies.
- Build a sound foundation and transform your environmental compliance program into an auditable and continuous process.
As enterprises integrate digital technology into their compliance program areas, they centralize information, make data more visible, build a continuous and auditable process, and ultimately gain control over their entire compliance program.
How we started on our mission
The foundation of our mission was — and will always be — to make managing compliance data and reporting faster, easier, and more accurate for regulated facilities in all 50 states. To tackle the fundamental problem environmental professionals and compliance teams had faced for decades, we focused on three key aspects of compliance management.
- Understand all regulations and their applicability — i.e., know what, where, when, why and how to report environmental compliance information.
- Solve the data management and reporting problem with a technology system that makes Encamp your go-to portal for compliance data and efficiency.
- Become the premier data source for environmental compliance in the form of a single source of truth.
As a source for critical environmental compliance information, we developed our technology to combine a powerful data management system with compliance reporting automation. Digitized data and digitalized processes then help simplify the entire compliance and reporting process, as do these Encamp features:
- Site-specific regulatory compliance profiles for every facility
- A compliance reporting event library and templates
- Workflows for automated compliance reporting
- Site-specific compliance validation and record keeping
Encamp is also deployed via the cloud, which lets enterprises implement Encamp in a matter of days (or a couple weeks) and ramp up compliance operations quickly. By comparison for data management point systems and legacy Environmental Management Information Systems (EMIS) hardware, implementation can take months, if not years, especially for EMIS products that require some serious configuration. Rapid deployment is part of our environmental compliance innovation approach.
An efficient option for end users
If you’re an environmental compliance professional at any level, Encamp gives you a modern software option that makes spreadsheets, point systems, and EMIS products seem archaic. Unlike the integrated Encamp technology, these solutions are often disjointed and inefficient. They create data silos and do a poor job of connecting and tracking data streams, let alone compliance operations. And quite frankly, they’re no fun to use.
Innovation never stops
When we launched the initial version of Encamp’s software publicly in 2018, it made us trailblazers in environmental compliance innovation almost immediately. By 2019, our software had drawn more than 100 customers and made Encamp the largest filer of EPCRA Tier II hazardous material inventory reports in the United States.
For the EPCRA reporting year 2020, nearly 200 Encamp customers used our solutions to prepare and file 3,761 Tier II reports, and collectively saved 32,047 people hours to do it. More impressively, our company’s progress in 2021 was marked by a 500% increase in ARR and 200% increase in people growth, setting the stage to more than double both areas by the end of 2022.
But there’s also a saying that innovation never stops. In Encamp’s case, upgrades to our software are both inevitable and constant.
For instance, we recently increased onboarding for larger enterprises and their EHS operations. For all facilities in an organization, we put a broader range of state and federal regulatory requirements information at a user’s fingertips through our software’s integration with EPA databases. New integrated mapping also puts all facilities in a single view. We additionally enhanced our software’s facility-based profiles and fillable forms for reporting to make the compliance process easier.
Yet even with ongoing improvements to the Encamp technology-driven system, we’ll never lose sight of why we created it.
- Save time. When you have all required regulatory information at your disposal, you save time tracking it down and researching if and when a regulation is applicable to a facility.
- Increase accuracy. When you verify applicable state and federal regulations automatically, you eliminate human error.
- Minimize risk. And when you determine required compliance actions accurately and file reports accordingly, you limit second-guessing and minimize the risk of non-compliance and significant financial penalties.
Now, we need to keep looking ahead and take another step.
While Encamp started out to become the premier data source and system of record for environmental compliance and reporting, the industry’s dynamic is shifting. The new outlook for environmental compliance innovation are systems of intelligence for regulatory rules and data, and technology must set the new course to delivering them.
Encamp has already set that course. And now our product roadmap, the support of our investors, and ongoing guidance from OpenView will let us transform environmental compliance yet again — this time with our increased emphasis on digital transformation and our Guided Environmental Compliance method to consistently produce positive business and compliance outcomes.
We also know the incredible minds at OpenView will help bring Encamp closer to achieving another ongoing mission: To ensure environmental compliance in every regulated facility in the U.S. We’re excited that OpenView is on this journey with us.
There’s a reason the people who make Encamp what it is are viewed as trailblazers of environmental compliance. For every environmental professional and compliance specialist in the EHS industry, we’re ready to make compliance and reporting even faster, easier, more accurate — and more intelligent — than we already have.
Stay tuned.
About OpenView
Founded in 2006, OpenView is a venture capital firm investing globally in business software companies. With a mission to improve people’s working lives, OpenView’s focused investment approach across sector and stage enables the firm to identify and partner with category leading business software companies. The firm’s focus extends to operational excellence through its dedicated expansion team working with portfolio companies on go-to-market, sales and marketing, product led growth, talent, and corporate development. The firm is based in Boston and has $1.5 billion in total capital under management. For more information, please visit openviewpartners.com.
About High Alpha
High Alpha is a leading venture studio focused on building next-generation B2B SaaS companies through a new model for entrepreneurship that unites company building and venture capital. The High Alpha team partners with entrepreneurs, investors and large corporations to conceive, launch and scale new software companies. For more information: highalpha.com or on Twitter at @highalpha.
About Allos Ventures
Allos Ventures invests in early-stage technology companies based in the Midwest. Investments focus on B2B software companies at a Seed and Series A stage, augmenting the capital provided by seed and startup investors. In addition to the capital Allos provides, portfolio companies benefit from the extensive operating and business-building experience of the firm’s managing partners, who make themselves available as needed to support each portfolio company’s growth. For more information: allosventures.com.
About IU Ventures
IU Ventures is a Code Section 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to empowering Indiana University faculty, alumni, and friends to support and invest in IU-affiliated innovation. Through the IU Philanthropic Venture Fund and the IU Angel Network, IU Ventures works to provide opportunities for individuals affiliated with IU to network with fellow entrepreneurs; build innovative new businesses; and support growing enterprises through donations, investments, time and talents.
Transforming the way enterprises stay in compliance
Encamp is on a mission to create a world where good for business can equal good for the environment. We help enterprises transform compliance programs and human processes into a technology-driven system that lays the foundation for accurate and ongoing environmental compliance through a blended method of intelligent high-tech solutions and high-touch expert support.
Luke Jacobs
Jacobs founded Encamp Inc. in 2018 with his two co-founders, his brother Sam Jacobs and friend Dan Smedema from what started as an idea during a camping trip in June 2017. Encamp focuses on software to serve the EHS industry by streamlining environmental compliance reporting.
