ServiceNow Inc. is acquiring Mapwize, a company based in Lille, France, with a software platform that helps employees of large enterprises navigate the office more easily.

ServiceNow announced the transaction today. The company expects to complete the deal by the end of the current quarter and plans to relaunch Mapwize’s software as a component of its flagship offering, the Now Platform, in the second half of next year.

Navigating from one part of the office to another can be a time-consuming task for employees working at a large corporate location, such as the skyscraper that houses their company’s headquarters. To address the challenge, Mapwize has developed a platform that functions as an indoor equivalent of Google Maps. The platform provides a virtual map of the office that employees can access via a mobile app to reduce the amount of time they must spend figuring out where to go.

One of Mapwize’s main selling points is that its software makes it fairly simple to create indoor maps for workers. A company’s operations team simply needs to upload the floor plans for the office, overlay icons to point out areas of interest and add directional cues. When users open the map in Mapwize’s app, a dot indicates their current location relative to their selected destination.

Acquiring Mapwize will advance ServiceNow’s efforts to expand its market presence outside its core information technology service management or ITSM segment.

ServiceNow’s Now Platform is a cloud-based platform that is used by many enterprise IT departments to manage the key tasks involved in their day-to-day work, such as answering support tickets. The Now Platform also provides features for managing work in other departments, including human resources, customer service and finance.

ServiceNow’s expansion into other areas besides IT service management is a central component of its revenue growth strategy. One of the areas to which the company has expanded as part of this strategy is the workplace services delivery segment, where it provides features for performing facility management tasks such as creating floor plans. Mapwize’s technology for navigating offices will extend that part of ServiceNow’s feature set and thereby advance its product-centric revenue growth effort.

In its most recent earnings report, ServiceNow disclosed that 18 of the largest 20 deals it had closed during the second quarter included three or more products.

Mapwize’s technology is also used outside corporate offices, which gives ServiceNow yet more ways to realize a return from the acquisition. Retailers, for example, can harness the Mapwize app to provide store maps for shoppers. The company’s software is used in several other industries as well, all of which present potential sales opportunities for ServiceNow. 

“Mapwize’s capabilities are all about boosting efficiency across people and places, making it easier for people to work, and to work together,” Blake McConnell, ServiceNow’s senior vice president of employee workflows, wrote in a blog post.

Acquisitions play an important role in ServiceNow’s expansion strategy. The company has bought at least three companies besides Mapwize since November 2020, including Element AI Inc., robotic process automation provider Intellibot and, most recently, application health monitoring provider Lightstep Inc. in May. 

Photo: ServiceNow