Aleran Software, Specializing in B2B Ecommerce, Opens Office in San Diego

SOFTWARE: Company Looks to Service Regions' Manufacturers

On March 2, Minneapolis-based Aleran Software announced it opened its first office location outside of Minnesota in San Diego, the “epicenter of the new manufacturing and

B2B tech growth engine,” according to Aleran CEO Alex Sayyah.

“The days of industry pessimism and tolerance for goodenough operations have transitioned into a manufacturing sector that is surging with real value, with real operations that deliver that value fast,” he said. “San Diego's and Southern California's resurgence and re-shoring, coupled with new generations of software that's nimble and streamlined make this the place to be.”

Aleran Software offers a unified commerce platform that helps streamline sales order management in B2B ecommerce for manufacturers.

The move to San Diego allows the company to tap into Southern California's industrial resurgence, led by Los Angeles which had $2.8 billion in sales of industrial space from January to August 2021, followed by Inland Empire with $2.3 billion.

San Diego is home to around 3,150 manufacturing companies currently supporting more than 110,000 jobs. Computer and electronic product manufacturing lead San Diego and North County's manufacturing industry, employing 12,746 people.

Another reason for the move to San Diego is that a “good chunk” of the sales team was already located here, said Carissa McCollum, Aleran director of inside sales. Many of sales team members joined Aleran in the last year and the company is still hiring.

“We're currently looking to grow the sales organization,” McCollum said. “There's a good market here in San Diego and Southern California for talent but we're also open to nationwide talent.”

Like many software companies, Aleran employees are spread across the world and work remotely. The San Diego office at 600 B St. is a coworking space that allows the sales team a space to meet in person but still work from home.

A ‘Big Opportunity'

Aleran Director of Marketing Mauricio Osorio said sales for the company have been “very good” as adoption of digital solutions by medium and small manufacturers have sped up over the last couple years.

“Some of these businesses, they were still calling folks or using paper catalogues. Their websites tend to be very informational. But now with COVID, it's accelerated many things,” he said. “A lot of folks are looking because of the pandemic and going, ‘Hey, I don't need to go to my customers, I can interact with them digitally.' So this has been a very big opportunity for our product.”

Small- and medium-sized manufacturers also like Aleran's “out-of-the-box” software that is already set up, “as opposed to solutions that take nine to 10 months to implement as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars to set up,” McCollum said. “With our software, you can just upload data and get set up pretty quickly.”

Aleran is also programmed to be flexible.

“Other software models require big and expensive changes to a company's existing system. Ours is like, ‘No, you can keep Shopify, you can keep WooCommerce you can keep BigCommerce and you can add our component on it and we will service your business to business channels,'” Osorio said. “That's what makes our software very unique. You can connect it with back ends, with ERP (enterprise resource planning), eIDs, warehouse management, marketplaces -- we allow that connection.”

In addition to its core B2B software, Aleran also has a business to consumer software solution called Shopsy that has easy to use features like dragand-drop.

Ease of use is a hallmark of Aleran, Osorio said. Since the company's founding, it has worked to facilitate solutions for smaller, Midwest manufactures streamline operations. Now, it is aiming to bring those solutions to more companies in another manufacturing region.

“A lot of people don't realize is that Southern California has one of the largest manufacturing centers in the entire country,” Osorio said. “We really are an engine in a lot of small to medium size manufacturing.”