CRM

Surfe brings your CRM data to LinkedIn — and vice versa • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 4, 2022Posted in CRM, Enterprise, revenue, sales, Startups, SurfeNo Comments

Surfe, the startup that was originally named Leadjet, is an interesting browser extension if you spend a lot of time on LinkedIn and are tired of switching between your CRM and the professional social network. When you install Surfe’s browser extension, you get some nifty syncing features between your CRM and LinkedIn. For instance, you can find leads on LinkedIn and easily export them to your CRM platform. But you can also view CRM data directly on LinkedIn profile pages. “We believe the CRM should be where the relationships happen,” co-founder and CEO David Maurice Chevalier told me. “We are just closing the gap here between these different platforms and CRMs.” Surfe works with HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive and Copper. Surfe originally started as a quick export tool for LinkedIn. You install the browser extension and you can export a LinkedIn profile to your CRM without having to manually copy and paste a ton of data. But it has evolved into a more powerful tool that provides two-way syncing. Surfe injects CRM data on LinkedIn directly so that you can interact with your CRM where you already spend most of your time. When you add a LinkedIn contact to your CRM, you can fill out CRM fields from there — industry, company size, role in the company, etc. If you rely heavily on LinkedIn messages, you can also sync private conversations with your CRM. It can be particularly useful with multiple sales people. You can see if someone on the team has already contacted a specific person and the current status of the deal. All these new features create a healthier relationship with LinkedIn. “We are not a data exporter, we increase the time spent on LinkedIn,” Chevalier said. The browser extension also acts as a shortcut to your CRM. You can write notes and create tasks in just a few clicks. There’s a bigger play for Surfe. The startup wants to modernize the CRM interface. Users can open full-screen views with the deal pipeline in kanban and list views. It might not replace your CRM but it can help you push quick updates. “The CRM is more of a data platform and we think we need a new front end,” Chevalier said. There are 1,500 companies using Surfe in one way or another. Some sales people just started using it directly, while other companies have hundreds of licenses. Spendesk is a big Surfe customer for instance. Surfe competes with products like Scratchpad and Dooly. Up next, the team wants to bring CRM features to more places around the web. The company raised $4 million (€4 million) this summer in a seed round led by 360 Capital. Other participants in the round include TS Ventures and various business angels. More impressive, the team managed to reach €1 million in annual recurring revenue without any proper sales team. Now that it has raised some funding, it wants to reach the next level. Image Credits: Surfe

WATI, a CRM tool built for WhatsApp, raises $23M led by Tiger Global • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in CRM, hong kong, malaysia, SMBs, Southeast Asia, Startups, WATI, WhatsApp, WhatsApp For BusinessNo Comments

WhatsApp is used by more than two billion around the world, and is an important tool for many small businesses. But as they scale up, even WhatsApp for Business might not be able to keep up with their needs. That’s where WATI (WhatsApp Team Inbox) steps in. Built on WhatsApp for Business’ API, WATI has customer sales and engagement tools created for the messaging app. Today the Hong Kong and Malaysia-headquartered startup announced it has raised $23 billion in Series B funding to scale its team and product. The round was led by Tiger Global with participation from returning investors Sequoia Capital India & Southeast Asia, and new investors DST Global Partners and Shopify (marking the e-commerce platform’s first venture investment in a startup operating in the Southeast Asia region). WATI’s last round of funding was an $8.3 million Series A announced 10 months ago, and its new round brings its total raised to more than $35 million since 2020. WATI founders Bianco Ho and Ken Yeung began working together in 2016, building Clare.AI, an omnichannel AI digital assistant for large Asia enterprises. In 2020, they launched WATI to give SMBs a self-service, low-code product on the WhatsApp for Business API. The startup currently has more than 6,000 customers in 75 countries, including SMBs in spaces like house cleaning, schools, education centers, edtech, fintech, medical facilities, D2C brands and Shopify stores. Ho told ZebethMedia that while she and Yeung were working on Clare.AI, “our assumption was that only larger enterprises had the resources to deploy a successful digital assistant with artificial intelligence.” After a few years of working with their clients, however, the two realized many were looking for a simpler solution, so WATI was created. Part of the reason for its launch was the digital acceleration caused by the pandemic, as many businesses rushed to get online. WATI founders Ken Yeung and Bianca Ho In many emerging markets, and mature markets like Europe, WhatsApp is the preferred communication channel between customers and businesses. WATI helps non-technical businesses scale their customer support, customer engagement and acquisition through its CRM. WATI’s customer engagement software is built on WhatsApp for Business’ API and lets clients send personalized notifications. The platform includes a collaborative team inbox used by multiple agents, and features like smart routing, canned responses, data tagging and analytics. Interactions can be automated through low-code workflows and chatbots, and connected to e-commerce platforms and CRMs. WATI also has integrations with platforms like Zoho, Shopify and Google Sheets. An example of how WATI is used is a large e-commerce company that relies on its to manage campaigns like Prime Day. The company usually gets 60 to 100 messages a day from customers through WATI’s team inbox, the majority of which come from its website’s WhatsApp chat, and sends about 30,000 messages every day when campaigns are active. Another example is an edtech client that has used WATI for almost two years. They rely on about 50 templates a month for lead generation, nurturing, payment reminders and class updates, and send 20,000 to 30,000 messages a day. WATI also helps them get high-quality organic leads through a WhatsApp widget on their website. Ho said WATI’s closest competitor is the native WhatsApp for Business app, which most SMBs start off using, but WATI is a suitable fit for them as their businesses scale. Funding will be used on hiring and investing in WATI’s product stack for low-code automation. The company also has go-to-market plans for emerging markets, like Latin America and Southeast Asia

Starboard Value reportedly taking ‘significant’ stake in Salesforce • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in activist investors, CRM, Enterprise, Salesforce, Starboard ValueNo Comments

Activist investor Starboard Value announced this morning that it was taking a “significant stake” in Salesforce, per CNBC. A presentation on Starboard’s website confirmed the firm’s interest in Salesforce, as well as Wix and Splunk. The presentation looks at the company’s financial situation and concludes that it could be giving investors a better return. On the positive side, Starboard likes the company’s refreshed executive team with Bret Taylor as co-CEO. It also likes Salesforce’s ambitious $50 billion revenue target for fiscal year 2026, but Starboard was less pleased with Salesforce’s combined growth and operating margin target of 42%. It claimed that Salesforce’s peers’ average is over 50%, and the implication is that it wants to see Salesforce closer to — or ahead of — its peer group. Further, Starboard sees a company that has much greater scale than peer cloud companies like Workday and ServiceNow, its comparison companies. Starboard claims in the investor presentation that “despite expecting to grow slower than [these] peers, [it] is only targeting operating margins in-line to below its much smaller peers.” “On a growth + margin basis, Salesforce significantly lags these companies and the peer set,” the company wrote in its presentation. It believes that if Salesforce “generates incremental margins that are in-line with peer levels as it grows towards $50 billion in FY2026 revenue, margins would significantly exceed the Investor Day target.” And that would increase free cash flow per share over the next several years as it approaches that $50 billion revenue mark. Salesforce issued a rather staid reaction to the news of Starboard’s move: “We are committed to acting in the best interests of our shareholders and are focused on continuing to execute on our strategy outlined at Dreamforce,” a company spokesperson told me. Salesforce stock is up over 6% in trading this morning on the news. This is a breaking story. We will update the story with additional information as it becomes available.