With two recent acquisitions and employee growth, EMS LINQ Inc., a Wilmington-headquartered software company, is aiming for further growth.

EMS LINQ, which provides an education resource management platform for K-12 schools and districts, in September acquired SRC Solutions Inc., a Pennsylvania-based company that developed an online registration suite for schools called Registration Gateway.

“The acquisition is an add-on to some of the things we're already working on,” said Adam Hooks, CEO of EMS LINQ. “A lot of it is big on the student registration side. That's one of the areas where the school districts are going to start moving into, doing more and more online registration instead of the old paper forms.”

The Registration Gateway software includes features that encompass the registration needs of schools such as online registrations, central records management, automated records request and delivery system, paperless HR management, student address verification and volunteer and employee clearance management, stated a news release.

While EMS LINQ already offered a type of registration management platform, SRC Solutions has unique workflows built into its software that allows each school to customize its documentation flow which will enhance the product, Hooks said.

“They also have an enterprise document management solution, which brings all the documentation to one central location,” he said. “Our plans are to expand that, not just for registration but whether it's athletic forms, HR onboarding, any place where there's a lot of document collection at the beginning of a process, we'll build that all into the one-on-one application.”

In August, EMS LINQ also acquired the software SchoolFinance from Michigan-based Optimal Solutions.

SchoolFinance is a financial management system that allows EMS LINQ to move into the Michigan market, a location where it previously had no customers, Hooks said.

“Trying to get into more of the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) side of the business is very state specific,” he said. “It's hard to get into some states without having some presence. So SchoolFinance has a nice customer base in the state of Michigan. They also do some charter schools, which we like working with.”

SchoolFinance provides accounts payable/receiving, budget, purchasing, payroll solution, retirement and HR management solutions for schools.

Hooks did not disclose the terms of both acquisitions.

EMS LINQ is also building a new menus product that will combine dietician expertise with inventory control software, he said.

The software company announced in September that it hired Taylor Nobles, a registered dietitian to coach customers in nutritional analysis, menu planning, special diets and consulting for administrative reviews, according to a news release.

“Having a dietician is pretty crucial for our nutrition side of the business,” Hooks said. “A lot of schools just don't have the expertise to build the menus. USDA has done a lot of regulation changes as far as what's healthy, what meets requirements, what doesn't meet the requirements. And so, we brought in a dietician, and she helps them go through their weekly menus.”

The company also recently hired Geoff Gohs, former vice president of engineering at Apiture, who will take the role of chief technology officer at EMS LINQ starting November.

While the company has grown to 180 employees across its three offices in Wilmington; Columbus, Ohio; and Laguna Beach, California, recruiting talent has been difficult, Hooks said.

“Competing for tech space here is a challenge,” he said. “Finding tech staff, right now I feel like we're constantly competing with CastleBranch or nCino. All of us are just kind of going in circles after the same small pool, and it's a challenge to say the least.”

EMS LINQ, which was founded in 1989, serves more than 3,000 districts and over 26,000 schools across the country and has plans of growing its employee count by 30% in 2020, he said.

“Two years ago, we barely had 50 employees,” Hooks said. “We were kind of smaller, but we've grown significantly and continue to put more and more investment back.”

This updated version corrects the number of schools EMS LINQ serves.