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Childcare Centre Desktop completes restructure as new strategic investor prepares to rapidly innovate
Jason Roberts
Dec 13, 2021
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Childcare Centre Desktop, the online resource library focused on early childhood education and care (ECEC) documentation that supports services meet their operational and compliance responsibilities, has confirmed the completion of a restructure that will see majority ownership transfer to a new strategic investor as it lays the foundation for a new frontier in childcare software.
“We are incredibly excited to welcome Sam Benjamin and Debbie Nerio as the new majority owners of the Childcare Centre Desktop family. Between them they bring an extraordinary amount of childcare experience as well as a digital capability that is second to none,” Mark Evans, founder and CEO of Childcare Desktop said. “When we founded the company in 2010 we were very much focused on supporting childcare services across the country by providing affordable, easy-to-access resources that save time, help them comply and relieve stress.” “This mission has not changed and our member base of over 2,500 services across Australia is testament to our success in meeting their needs. However in a world where technology is evolving so quickly, we are now ready and able to take the platform to the next level.” “As part of our new Advisory Board, Sam and Debbie will be involved in the business at both strategic and operational levels and we look forward to leveraging their extensive network and dynamism in the months and years ahead.” New team brings best in class childcare, digital and software skills to the table The new team will work together, pooling their respective expertise, to drive the business forward. Mr Benjamin and Ms Nerio bring extensive hands-on experience in the childcare sector having founded, scaled and operated two large groups, First Grammar Early Education and Greenwood Early Education, over a fourteen year period. Mr Benjamin is also the founder of Seventh Street Ventures, a venture capital company, with a range of interests in the childcare, software and media sectors. “We have been tracking Childcare Centre Desktop for a number of years now and have always been impressed by the high quality of its resources and deep commitment to its members.” Mr Benjamin said. “To have been given the opportunity to take a majority stake in the business is very exciting and we look forward to bringing all of our skills and experience together to take the platform to the next level.” Platform to be rebranded “The Desktop” with large pipeline of new features to come With the restructure now complete the team will move quickly to rebrand the platform to “The Desktop” and launch an extensive pipeline of complementary new features to provide additional functionality and support to its members, making Desktop the leader in childcare management software. “Having been involved in operating childcare centres for so many years we are intimately aware of the needs of not just service managers but the broader teams as well,” Mr Benjamin said. “These insights have given us a strong sense of what additional features we can add to the Desktop platform and in so doing provide members with an even stronger set of tools and resources to support their day to day needs.”It is the team’s intention to grow their client base to over 7,000 services by 2023 and are open to partnerships with other software providers including existing CCMS providers and parent engagement platforms to support the roll out of their ecosystem build.
“We have looked very closely at the current product offerings in the marketplace and feel strongly there is room to develop and launch a new fully integrated, API ready support ecosystem around the Desktop platform that will drive better outcomes at a more competitive price for all of the ECEC community,” Mr Benjamin added.
The development pipeline currently includes workforce management tools, including AI driven rostering, human resources information and learning management systems as well as a next generation policy management system, CRM module and communications platform. “We look forward very much to sharing our vision with the ECEC community and building the first true ECEC software platform of the future.”
To learn more about Childcare Centre Desktop please click here or to engage directly with the new strategic investors please email Sam Benjamin directly at sam@seventhstreet.vc
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