The scale-up Artion from Aalter announces that it has completed an investment round of 1.4 million euros. The company has developed a SaaS solution for an extremely manual process that almost every business has to deal with: correctly organizing and monitoring legally required inspections.
The investment is led by Entourage, the recently established fund of Pieterjan Bouten, which sees Artion as the future international reference software. This also brings renowned SaaS expertise on board for Artion. This financing round is further supported by Dovesco, Tilleghem, and Belfius.
Artion occupies a completely new place in the market. Their independent software positions itself between the customer and the various inspection companies. With this platform, Artion can take over the manual work of the customer and provide assurance that the entire process is inspected according to the correct legislation.
“With this first investment round, we want to accelerate Artion’s growth, expand our team, realize further product developments, and develop opportunities abroad,” says Tom Van Coillie, co-founder of Artion.
Monitoring inspections: an overlooked risk
“For few companies, inspections are something that is at the top of the pile,” says co-founder Caroline Van der Steen. “Knowledge of environmental and safety legislation is usually not very up-to-date, and the monitoring of inspections is a manual task that is still tracked in Excel and Outlook. In practice, this means that almost no company is fully compliant.”
When inspections are not up to standard, the risks increase significantly if something goes wrong. Fines can be substantial, but that’s the least of the concerns. In the event of a workplace accident, fire, or worse, there can also be serious insurance implications and even liability issues for directors, managers, or CEOs.
Caroline Van der Steen speaks from extensive experience. Before co-founding Artion with Jean-Michel Teerlinck and Tom Van Coillie, she spent 15 years working for the government as head of the environmental department, conducting inspections at companies. “I issued countless reports because companies were not compliant with their inspections, mostly because they lacked sufficient structure or knowledge. As a regulator, there was little I could do about it, but it bothered me that there was more potential. That’s how the idea for Artion was born. I quit my job as a civil servant and started our own business with Jean-Michel and Tom.”
Artion is not an inspector itself but an independent software that stands between the customer and the various inspectors. The Artion platform relieves the customer, manages the inspectors, centralizes, and verifies. “This is a new market approach that Artion uniquely offers today,” explains Caroline Van der Steen. “A unique feature of Artion is that we combine the certificates from the various inspection companies on one platform. This means that the entire inventory is in one place, and the customer has a real-time and consolidated overview per asset, per location, per region, and per country through Artion.”
Customers
Artion’s solution meets the needs of diverse customers. “Each with their specific concerns,” explains Tom Van Coillie. “30% of our current customers are SMEs that want to have the necessary inspections fully in order and want to spend as little time as possible on them. Artion offers these business owners complete peace of mind, allowing them and their employees to focus on other tasks. 70% are larger companies with professional facility or property management. They find efficiency gains and assurance with Artion. Real-time dashboards per asset, per location, or per country allow them to manage and report correctly to the management or in the context of ISO or ESG.”
This is also confirmed by Stefanie Van den Rul, COO at CEUSTERS: “As a professional building manager, it is crucial to have certainty about inspections. Artion gives CEUSTERS the opportunity to manage this efficiently and to report correctly at any time.”
An international growth story
“We already receive requests for an international offering from existing customers. This year, we want to introduce Artion in the Netherlands,” says Tom Van Coillie. “As a next step, we want to strengthen our team as quickly as possible with talented and ambitious professionals, ranging from sales, IT developers, and marketers to administratively supporting profiles, who share our drive to conquer the market in Belgium and beyond with Artion.”
Pieterjan Bouten, founder of Entourage: “We are convinced that Artion has tremendous potential to digitize and transform the inspection and compliance market internationally. The experience and passion of the founders combined with a top product and innovative market model make us excited to create an international growth story together.”
About Artion
Artion is a fast-growing Belgian scale-up. Through its Saas solution, Artion automates the organisation and tracking of legally mandated company inspections. The platform provides clients with complete operational relief and the confidence that the entire inspection process adheres to the correct regional legislation. For more information: www.artion.be