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BoostUp.ai, provider of a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform for managing revenue operations (revenue ops) infused with AI capabilities, today announced it has garnered $6 million in additional series A funding, bringing its total raised to $14 million, after an initial seed round last year.
The company is part of a growing cadre of startups attempting to unify sales, marketing, and customer service processes in a way that enables organizations to boost sales and increase overall profitability. BoostUp claims its revenue increased by more than 1,000% in fiscal 2020, thanks in part to customers such as Udemy, Degreed, Plume, and Windstream.
Dueling platforms
The company’s Connected Revenue Intelligence & Operations platform is usurping customer relationship management (CRM) applications as the single source of truth for organizations that need to tightly integrate sales, marketing, and customer service process, CEO Sharad Verma told VentureBeat. “The CRM is no longer the system of record,” he said.
The Connected Revenue Intelligence & Operations platform differs from rival offerings in that it includes predictive analytics capabilities enabled by machine learning algorithms, Verma added. The platform ingests unstructured data from sources like emails, phone calls, calendars, meetings, and messaging applications that are then matched to accounts and opportunities found in CRM applications. Natural language parsing, sentiment analysis, and proprietary indexing of spoken and written keywords are then applied to better understand patterns of sales trends to forecast more accurately whether deals will close.
BoostUp claims customers have achieved 95% forecast accuracy, reviewed 5 times the number of opportunities per manager, and increased sales manager and sales representative capacity by over 15%.
The latest round of funding was led by Canaan Partners, with participation from Emergent Ventures and BGV Ventures. It will be employed to scale product development and increase customer growth.
It’s not clear to what degree providers of CRM applications are responding to any shift toward a more integrated approach to revenue Ops. Salesforce, for example, offers separate CRM, marketing, and customer service applications that are integrated on the same cloud. But Boostup.ai is making a case for a single platform that aggregates data in a way that makes it simpler to apply AI to identify, for example, when the level of customer engagement is misaligned with the sales forecast.
Revenue Ops
Organizations that are shifting toward a Revenue Ops approach to engaging customers have typically appointed a chief revenue officer (CRO) to assume responsibility for all sales channels. At a time when most sales engagements are occurring via some form of a digital channel, Verma said organizations must measure and monitor the actual level of engagement with customers alongside other historical data that might indicate whether, for example, a customer tends to always wait until the last week of a quarter to sign a purchase order as part of an effort to obtain better pricing.
Conversely, sales representatives may simply not be all that good at forecasting, which Sherma noted would identify an opportunity to improve training.
Regardless of companies’ motivations for embracing Revenue Ops, it’s clear sales, marketing, and customer service processes are becoming more integrated. Many organizations now realize customer service representatives that regularly engage customers are in many cases more adept at identifying additional revenue opportunities they can close on their own. Sales teams in many cases are now focusing the bulk of their time and effort on trying to land new customers versus making sure every product or service has been delivered to the precise specifications on the contract.
Naturally, it may take a while before every organization is able to fully transition to a Revenue Ops model. However, the way organizations engage customers is poised to change fundamentally.
