Sphera Solutions, a Chicago-based company making software that helps businesses monitor environmental impact and worker safety, has bought a competitor and is looking to hire over 100 more people.
Sphera’s name is new but the business dates back to the 1980s. It sells its software largely to Fortune 1,000 companies in oil and gas, chemicals, and life sciences; it lists Abbott, Eli Lilly, Exxon, Boeing and General Motors among its 2,500 customers.
This month, Sphera announced it’s acquiring 55-employee Rivo Software, a United Kingdom-based provider that runs a cloud-based competitor. The acquisition will strengthen Sphera’s health and safety offerings and help it expand internationally, President and CEO Paul Marushka said.
Sphera says it’s keeping Rivo’s employees, but it’s also hiring at its Randolph-and-Michigan headquarters in Chicago: It has about 20 open positions and plans to add another 100 workers by the end of the year. Sphera had 550 employees before the acquisition, 55 of whom were in Chicago.
Many of the job openings are sales- and marketing-focused, Marushka said, but the company is also looking for technology workers, as well as people to fill finance and service positions.
Sphera’s customers use the company’s software for safety and sustainability goals that influence culture, sales and stock prices, he said.
“Now workers are demanding the workplace be safer and greener — and the shareholders are demanding it,” he said. “Imagine if you have an unsafe work environment or lots of injuries. Productivity goes down. Or with an oil spill — your reputation goes down, and the stock value goes down.”
The name Sphera and its status as an independent company only dates back to 2016, when Marushka and private equity firm Genstar Capital bought the 30-year-old IHS Operational Excellence and Risk Management business from then-Denver-based IHS, then rebranded it Sphera.
About 81 percent of environment, health and safety professionals say the ability of a platform to cover all their workflows is very important or important, said Trevor Bronson, industry analyst at research and consulting firm Verdantix.
The environment, health and safety software market — which helps companies navigate laws, rules and processes designed to help protect employees, the public and the environment — is valued at more than $1 billion in 2017, and expected to grow to $1.43 billion by 2020, Bronson said.
Cheryl V. Jackson is a freelance writer.
Twitter @cherylvjackson
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