UpShot Corp. Monday (April 16) announced the launch of new implementation services to get customers of its web-based Sales Force Automation software up and running quickly, with additional data import, user training and Q&A support.
“In the current economic environment, nothing is more important than getting fast results,” Keith Raffel, Upshot chairman and founder, told InternetNews. “We found ourselves working with larger and larger companies that want to help their sales right now, not 6 months from now.”
The implementation services are offered at two levels: UpShot Turn Key and UpShot Assisted. For a one-time charge of $7,500, UpShot Turn Key guarantees deployment in 15 business days or less. After analyzing a company’s sales processes and needs, a team of sales process designers, implementation engineers and import specialists customizes the UpShot service, imports data from legacy systems and trains the customer’s users.
UpShot Assisted, available for a one-time charge of $2,500, is a do-it-yourself option, but it still offers assistance from UpShot’s sales process design specialists, data migration consultants, data import specialists and trainers. “We’re not neglecting our customers who don’t pay as much,” Raffel insisted.
“By getting things up and running quickly, our customers will find themselves at a huge advantage,” Raffel said. “We’ve spent time, money and resources building up our customer advocacy group. We have a team of specialists ready to work with the customer.”
According to Raffel, this implementation system allows UpShot to implement dozens of customers a month, adding to the “many thousands” of existing customers at a rate of 20-percent month over month. UpShot has recently been moving up-market, signing divisions of four Fortune 500 customers last month, Raffel said. UpShot’s main focus is the middle market, usually consisting of companies with 100 to 1,000 seats, he said.
“When it comes to software, there’s the kind that helps you cut expenses, like supply chain and ERP software. Then there’s software like CRM that tries to increase revenue,” Raffel said. “UpShot is in a terrific position, since we manage to do both at once – we can increase revenues, and do it at a price that helps reduce costs below the line.”
Privately held, UpShot is based in Mountain View, Calif. UpShot is funded by venture capital firms, leading companies, and private investors., including Advanced Technology Ventures, FrontLine Capital Group, Worldview Technology Partners, Alloy Ventures, Intuit co-founder Tom Proulx, and former Informix Software president, CEO and chairman Bob Finocchio.
