Rod Brown, founder and retired chief financial officer of MadeToOrder (asi/259540), has joined the board of Binated, a technology consulting and back office solutions provider for the promotional products industry. Based in India, Binated provides services to several promotional products suppliers and distributors in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

In his new role, Brown will act as an industry consultant as the company begins its expansion efforts into the U.S. and Europe, with a five-year goal of increasing revenue to $7 million and employees to 400 from its current count of 100.

The move has been several years in the making, after Binated and MadeToOrder established a working relationship in 2014. “We started to explore offshore back-office services, and we interviewed two of the largest companies servicing this industry,” Brown said. “We realized we wanted a more nimble, flexible partner.”

Brown met Binated founder and CEO Anish Varghese at PSI Dusseldorf, and Varghese agreed to visit MadeToOrder’s California offices with his chief information officer and head of training. “They embedded in our firm for an entire week,” Brown said. “They sat with sales, support and accounting, and learned how we do various tasks. They began to build outflows, and together we started monitoring, tracking and reviewing data each month. This was a game-changer for us.”

Varghese currently splits his time between India, the U.K. and the company’s U.S. office in Houston. Among the services Binated now offers promo firms are technology and business consulting, order life-cycle management, website and microsite management, pre-sales support, order management and post-sales support.

“Binated is the only organization that provides all the services that any promotional products company would look for from a single source,” Brown said. “They provide an end-to-end business solution, with strong management information systems to help business owners and sales partners focus and improve.”