In December last year, I wrote a blog post about how excited I was for Notion to be making a seed investment in MOVE Guides. Less than a year later the company is announcing an $8.2m Series A round led by our friends at NEA and with Notion participating.

I think the speed that MOVE Guides has gone from Seed to a decent size Series A round with a top quality US investor is a reflection of both the velocity with which the company is moving and also the tremendous opportunity that lies ahead.

I first started talking to Brynne Herbert, the company’s dynamic CEO a little over a year ago. At that time using technology to transform the relocation process was not much more than an interesting but unproven idea. What was clear is that relocation was a time-consuming and frustrating process for both employees and managers and the current solutions were both expensive and antiquated. We felt the industry was ripe for disruption but the company still had it all to do.

There are two significant developments that have happened since that time. First, the company has signed a number of large enterprise clients and started to build some real momentum in the market both in Europe and the US. Well-known names like Tesco, Adobe, lululemon and others we can’t talk about have signed up to the service and there are many more in the pipeline. The company’s service has now powered thousands of moves across 150 locations and with a 99% satisfaction rate from employees who are moving.

Second, the company has broadened its vision to support all forms of talent mobility and developed its product (coined the Talent Mobility Cloud) to include employee, HR and vendor hubs. Together this gives enterprises, not only a great employee relocation benefit, but also the data, reporting and oversight they need to be compliant and efficient in a complex global industry.

Mobility is not only about employee relocation although this is an important part of it. The broader mobility space includes relocations, new hires, expatriate assignments and temporary project-based assignments. It is really about having the right people in the right places working at full capacity. This is an area of real competitive advantage for global companies but one that is all too often not being taken advantage of. MOVE Guides understands this and uses technology to optimize the mobility process across all types of mobile employees, and, ultimately, make their clients more successful.

The MOVE Guides’ service supports the person moving but also the HR manager and the vendors involved. In this way the company pulls together all the key stakeholders of the mobility experience into one integrated solution. The employee has all the tools they need to make a successful transition including a checklist of tasks, location and vendor information and integrated payments. An HR Manager has an overview of all mobility programs and can customize reports for management and compliance purposes. Vendors can easily communicate and receive payments from both the company and the employees.

Companies spend more than $150bn a year on global mobility services. Around 10% of that goes to relocation management companies. But their product is expensive and cumbersome, and does not take advantage of today’s technology (and employee expectations) in terms of the Internet and mobile devices.

Global companies want to become more competitive and optimize their talent where it is most needed. MOVE Guides solve this problem with a truly innovative cloud-based service that makes its clients more competitive and more compliant, all while meeting the expectations of a new generation of workers. It is the right solution at the right time to disrupt a large and growing market and we are thrilled to be making a further investment in it.

In other news, Notion invests $9m into the rocket driving the Direct Booking Movement.