Things are going so swimmingly at Xiplinx Technologies that CEO Brent MacDonald is going back to where he was three years ago – in the PropelICT accelerator.

Xiplinx, the Saint John company that helps manufacturing plant managers monitor data from around their factories, was recently accepted into the Propel Build program. That’s the advanced accelerator for growth stage companies, and the fact that Xiplinx has entered the program makes sense once you think about it. 

The name Xiplinx jumped out from the list of companies accepted in Build because Xiplinx was a member of the first cohort of Propel (then called Launch36) in the spring of 2012. Recently, the company has been increasing sales and finding new partners. And MacDonald believes the best way to sustain the growth is to go through the three-month program once again.

“Our company’s growing for sure, but I sincerely hope that none of us get to the point that we don’t have a lot more to learn,” said MacDonald in an interview.

In assessing what Xiplinx has to achieve in the next year or so, he looked at the curriculum for the Build program and realized it covered a lot of material Xiplinx needs to learn.

“It was pretty clear that everything we’ll go through in the program will pertain to us in the next few months,” he said. “It really was a no brainer when we looked at it from that perspective.”

Xiplinx’s product, Siteflo, allows workers around a plant to input data using mobile devices. Siteflo aggregates the data and presents it on an easy-to-read dashboard that plan managers can view in real-time. When it went through Launch36 in 2012, Xiplinx had its greatest traction with beverage makers, but the company is now having success in the consumer packaging market.

The company has had 500 percent user growth in the last year, and MacDonald expects June will be its best month ever in terms of client acquisition. Xiplinx’s client base is largely in Canada and the U.S., though it is moving more into Mexico. It has also signed five channel partners, including such industry leaders as Bluewater Automation and BNAP Inc..

Last year, Xiplinx received a $500,000 loan from the New Brunswick government and a combination of grants and loans from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency totalling $214,250. The New Brunswick Innovation Foundation has a total investment of $350,000 in the company.

What MacDonald and his colleagues really want to learn in the Build program is more about how to scale a Software-as-a-Service product in a mature market.

XIplinx is older than the other five companies in the Build cohort this year, but MacDonald does not expect to stand out as the wizened veteran. He said the advances in the ecosystem have been so profound in the past few years that the other participants will come to the program well versed in lean methodology.

“I’ve met a bunch of them and I’m not worried about being in front of them,” said MacDonald. “We were part of the first Propel cohort. People are coming out of programs all over the region since then, and they’re 1,000 percent ahead of where we were just by virtue of the fact that the ecosystem is so much more mature.”

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