ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — Rochester-based Envative is seeing great demand for its information technology expertise during the pandemic.

Co-owner Craig Lamb discussed the company’s growth during our Greater Rochester Enterprise Why ROC conversation Wednesday.

“Envative is a custom software developing company,” explained Lamb. “We deal with technology engineering, so if it doesn’t exist or you can dream it up, or you have these plans and want to know if it can happen companies call us.”

During the pandemic, clients have experienced shifting needs. Lamb said they have turned to Envative for solutions. “I think what the pandemic did is it was a reminder about how quickly environments can change and then companies responded to that. So it wasn’t just about becoming a remote workforce. They had to respond to their customers and delivery systems, and things like that. We got a lot of inquiries to speed up projects that worked around order automation or process automation within their companies, having delivery systems that were contactless. And we’re not just talking about basic websites or e-coms, more advanced than that – artificial intelligence, machine learning, and integrations with delivery systems outside of their environments.”

The Internet of Things or IoT is a key component of Envative’s business, particularly when it comes to web and mobile applications. “IoT has been around for a bit and it’s starting to see some more attention because people are seeing ways that they can apply it within their businesses,” Lamb said. “So still the most prominent places have been in health care, security and access control, manufacturing, and things along those lines but it’s been exciting because it was reduced to just kind of sensors, as you can imagine, but we’ve been able to integrate them into some software systems that will allow for full automation and create data points for our clients to be able to make real decisions. So like in manufacturing if a process is going wrong it can stop on its own, or it can go to a process for maintenance on its own. We’ve worked with a hotel in Texas and we completely automated, contactless, so the reception is passed by because the key is on their phone, housekeeping is on their phone. We have panels in each one of the walls that can second as a security system, set temperature, set lights, all kinds of crazy stuff, so fully automate that stuff.”

Envative has clients outside the region but continues to grow its local operation. “We’re big fans of Rochester,” said Lamb. “We’ve been here for 23 years and there’s a lot of great talent here. Just the universities, we have a great partnership with RIT which has been awesome with our co-ops. We’ve been Downtown for 20 years which has now been dubbed an innovation zone, so we’re excited about watching that growth. We’ve had a great partnership with GRE. It’s an amazing place to live and work, without a doubt. And I think too the country is starting to recognize Rochester as a technical city outside of just software. We have optics and manufacturing that’s exceeding most of the baselines around the country as well. It’s a great place.”

Envative is currently looking for highly skilled employees. For more information, visit Envative.com.