Mike Cornell and the Business of Making Things Fit

In September 2008, Mike Cornell had a software company to build and a financing deal that nearly failed to arrive. Accellos secured $28.5 million as financial markets were coming apart. Some of the money immediately went into buying a transportation software business. The timing gave a fairly ordinary corporate announcement the atmosphere of someone signing a lease while the building inspector was still outside.

Cornell was already thinking about the next acquisitions. His company made software for the decidedly physical business of moving things: warehouses, trucks, inventory and orders. The opportunity was to put more of those capabilities within reach of the same customer. Raising money was a means of getting on with it.

That episode is a useful entrance to his career. Across Accellos, HighJump and TrueCommerce, Cornell kept returning to a problem familiar to anyone who has watched two business systems fail to agree. A company can own plenty of software and still have an astonishing amount of work left between the pieces.

Three colleagues, one practical starting point

Cornell studied at Michigan State University, with his education listed from 1976 to 1979. His professional profile places him in Colorado Springs, the city where Accellos began. The geography anchors a career that would eventually span businesses serving customers well beyond the United States.

Accellos began in 2006. Cornell, Flint Seaton and Ross Elliott had worked together at NxTrend, the distribution software business. They came to the new venture with a working relationship already established. Cornell took the chief executive role, Elliott the technology role and Seaton finance. The division of responsibilities was rather more concrete than the usual promise to change everything.

The name shortened “accelerated logistics.” The founding business took shape through the acquisition of Canadian software companies Radio Beacon and Headwater Technologies. Their connections to the Sage and Microsoft Dynamics ecosystems gave Accellos a place among businesses already using those accounting and enterprise systems.

Radio Beacon brought warehouse management technology. In announcing its purchase, Cornell emphasized employees, customers and the reseller channel alongside the software. Those relationships mattered because a warehouse application has to find its way into a working business. The product may be digital; the installation involves people with deadlines, existing routines and little appetite for surprises.

Buying the pieces, organizing the work

The transportation business bought during the 2008 financing was Prophesy, a Connecticut provider serving more than 1,200 small trucking companies. It gave Accellos another part of the journey from order to delivery. Cornell also described an ambition to expand beyond domestic opportunities into Europe and Asia. The company was young; its proposed shopping list was already international.

A purchase creates work inside the buyer, too. By 2011, Accellos was organizing around business units covering transportation, warehouse management, third-party logistics and supply-chain execution. Bill Ashburn became general manager of the transportation software operation. The arrangement gave that customer group a team with a defined responsibility.

This is a revealing part of Cornell’s record. The acquisitions get the dates and the announcements, but the organization has to catch up with them. A transport customer needs people who understand transport. A warehouse customer has another set of questions. Gathering products under a corporate name does not automatically give everyone the right answer at the support desk.

In early 2012, Chad Collins joined as chief marketing officer. He had worked at HighJump, including on its move toward cloud delivery and expansion outside North America. Cornell praised his understanding of the market. Before the two companies combined, a future connection between them was already sitting on the management team.

The name on the door became HighJump

Accel-KKR invested in Accellos in 2012. Cornell described the partnership as a way to fund the company’s existing strategy: delivering a broader collection of supply-chain tools to midsized businesses and logistics providers. Money supplied the ability to act on the plan.

The consequential combination arrived in July 2014. Accellos and HighJump agreed to merge. Cornell became chief executive of the combined business, which would use the HighJump name while retaining Accellos for its midmarket supply-chain execution products. The founder’s company name could take a smaller place on the door.

The announced reach was more than 11,000 customers across 23 countries. Warehouse management, transport management, route delivery and trading-partner connectivity would sit within one business. Cornell pointed to customers rethinking their supply chains as commerce spread across channels. Orders could originate in more places; the systems behind them needed to keep up.

The logic had a complication. Accellos and HighJump served different portions of the market. Smaller operators and larger enterprises could ask very different things of sales, implementation, pricing and support. The businesses were in no hurry to collapse their warehouse products into one. Keeping useful differences was part of making the combination work.

The merger announcement also committed to protecting customers’ investments in existing solutions. That promise matters in a business where a software purchase can shape years of operations. Switching systems means more than choosing another screen: people learn procedures, establish connections and build routines around what they have. Keeping product lines available gave the combination a practical starting point. Customers could consider the wider offering while continuing with familiar tools. For Cornell, expansion brought an obligation to the installed customer base alongside the opportunity to sell something additional.

A wider map of the customer’s day

HighJump was sold to Germany’s Körber in 2017. TrueCommerce remained with Accellos Holdings and Accel-KKR. The warehouse and connectivity businesses now had separate paths. During the investment period, the wider operation also moved from installed software licenses toward hosted subscriptions, changing how customers received and paid for its products.

Cornell’s description of the outcome was appreciative: “Accel-KKR helped us achieve more than we ever dreamt of on our own.” The first-person plural suits the history. His co-founders remained senior leaders through the investment partnership. Whatever else changed around them, this was a business built with continuing colleagues.

At TrueCommerce, the boundaries of the offering kept expanding. Datalliance, acquired in September 2017, brought vendor-managed inventory and collaborative replenishment. That placed the company closer to decisions about when stock should be replenished, alongside the work of exchanging orders and connecting trading partners.

The practical appeal was straightforward. Suppliers and distributors could use demand information to coordinate inventory, rather than treating each order as an isolated message. Cornell described the addition in terms of related capabilities and access to new markets. A useful neighboring activity had become part of the business.

A sofa brings its own instructions

In May 2019, TrueCommerce acquired ecUtopia. Its supply-chain collaboration tools strengthened the business in home furnishings and apparel. The choice illustrates an additional dimension of Cornell’s expansion strategy: deeper knowledge of particular industries, alongside a wider range of services.

A broad software portfolio still has to accommodate the details of the customer’s trade. Home furnishings and apparel each bring particular business relationships and processes. In describing ecUtopia, Cornell emphasized that vertical depth. More customers in more markets would be useful; understanding their work would make the added reach worth having.

Partnerships offered another route. Earlier that year, TrueCommerce and ChannelAdvisor announced a connection spanning marketplaces, wholesale channels, fulfillment partners and business systems. Cornell spoke about the pressure that new selling channels placed on supply chains. Selling in more places could make the operational day much more complicated.

His attention stayed on the relationships behind the sale: vendors, business systems and fulfillment partners. It is an unromantic cast of characters until an order goes wrong. Then everyone would quite like to know whether the information reached the right place. Cornell’s business lived in that question.

Seen together, these decisions describe a working method: add a capability, connect it to the customer’s existing activities, then find the next gap. The acquisitions and the ChannelAdvisor partnership used different mechanisms. Both addressed the same practical concern. A merchant opening another channel still needs its orders, inventory and fulfillment to line up. The commercial opportunity lives alongside the administrative nuisance. In this corner of software, making a customer’s day less complicated can require a rather complicated business behind the scenes.

The handoff, then the waterfront

On December 7, 2020, TrueCommerce announced John Fay as its next chief executive. Cornell, who had held the role since 2014, would remain an advisor during the transition. The appointment followed the acquisition of TrueCommerce by Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, with Accel-KKR retaining an investment.

“I’m proud of the people on the TrueCommerce team and the business we’ve built.”

Mike Cornell, December 2020

His farewell statement put the team and its work first. Fay arrived with experience leading technology and transaction businesses, including ocean-shipping network INTTRA. The succession preserved a familiar subject: companies whose value depended on the connections they maintained.

Cornell’s next publicly announced executive chapter also involved cargo. Navis introduced him as CEO at its online Navis Connect event in November 2021. In January 2022, the maritime software company identified him as chairman and chief executive while announcing its workplace certification.

That announcement included a different sort of operating measure: 84 percent of surveyed team members said Navis was a great place to work. Cornell welcomed the recognition. It gives a glimpse of the organizational side of a career often described through software portfolios and transactions.

From distribution software to warehouses, trading networks and maritime operations, the recurring subject is coordination. Cornell built and led businesses around the point where one organization’s work meets another’s. The customer places an ordinary order. Behind it, an extraordinary number of things have to fit.