TORONTO — Housekeepers carting iPods can easily communicate with each other on the job, but the team at San Francisco-based Cotap wants to make the job even easier by introducing a new communication platform that allows users to share messages and photos in real time.
Mobile is quickly transforming how guests and employees communicate, and with the advent of bring-your-own-device, many employees are using personal mobile devices for business communication purposes. Cotap was designed to provide a secure messaging platform for employees to share information in real time and view when the recipient reads the message. Users can make phone calls or conference calls, add meetings to their calendar, send emails and browse shared links — all without needing to manually switch apps.
The executive team showed off the service to a small group of hospitality and construction executives last night at the Renaissance Hotel Downtown Toronto. The team was comprised of Jim Patterson, founding member of Yammer, which was later acquired by Microsoft; Orlando Phillips, former COO of Guest-tek and Brian Murray, former director at Yammer.
“Front-line workers in hotels, construction, retail — there’s a lot of traditionally underserved people out there,” says Patterson, CEO. “We think mobile, and apps like Cotap, are the key for businesses to finally be able to unlock the sort of productivity gains that they got by computerizing the desk-bound part of their workforce, and apply a lot of those things to the field.”
