Tom Paine
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Recently, a managing partner for Emergence Capital, a VC firm that has been wildly successful investing in the SaaS space (take Veeva as an example),
indicated that it was shifting emphasis from SaaS startups to mobile enterprise applications. “We think this is a bigger trend than SaaS has been to date”, said Managing Partner Kevin Spain. He didn't recommend ignoring the web, but in most cases building mobile and web capabilities together.
Proscape, a Horsham-based company (as in Montgomergy County, not the UK, as I recently confused the two in one case) had already taken that message to heart. The old Proscape was a pioneering pharmaceutical CRM firm etablished in the late 1990s. It partnered with Microsoft's Dynamics CRM, and built "closed loop" systems for its clients, meaning they were designed to show the back-end results of sales or detailing efforts.
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Proscape President Derek Pollock speaking at last week's
New York TechBreakfast/Proscape |
Co-founder and President Derek Pollock said in an interview with
Philly Tech News that the original Proscape was successful, and produced positive returns for its investors, but three years ago they decided to wrap up the old venture and start a new company from fresh under the same name. The new Proscape recapitalized, raising a round from a set of new and old investors. It would maintain its legacy pharma customer base, but it had a different vision for its new venture.
It would be built upon a simple set of mobile apps, generic in nature, that could be deployed across industries. The apps would provide for easy end-user markup requiring no tech skills, but at the same time would not be limited to restrictive templates.
Proscape would call it the "The Marketing App Cloud."
Processing and aggregating the information collected through the mobile apps would be handled through Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Customers would bring their own CRM. Proscape would exit the business of installing and helping to maintain CRM systems.
Proscape found the CRM of choice among a majority of customers (about 60%) was Salesforce. As a result, while not being dismissive of other CRMs, Proscape jumped on the Salesforce bandwagon, and will be presenting in three sessions at Dreamforce this week.
Proscape is targeting the new apps to marketing and ad agencies, who reach a broad audience, but often lack the time and expertise to design such solutions themselves.
Proscape Demo
Pollock, who grew up in Wayne (Conestoga High) and received a degree from Wharton before spending time with Big Blue (IBM, for you younger guys), joined Proscape during its startup days. Also joining Proscape early on was Tim Healy, Proscape's present Chief Executive Officer.
They recognized that the new Proscape would need different sets of skills than the old one. So a special development group was developed, mostly spread out between Colorado and Silicon Valley, under the guidance of Sanj Surati, Vice President Software Engineering. He previoulsly had worked as a lead for Microsoft on the Windows 2000 and XP platforms.
The company also added Bill Conn, a Penn grad and English & Biology major (yes, english majors can get tech jobs; I know one personally) with experience at PeopleLinx among other stops, as Director of Content. As chief story teller, Conn has overseen the creation of a wealth of video, animated, and graphic content that helps to explain Proscape's value proposition.
In looking back over past items contained within Google, I found a paucity of Proscape marketing materials online. In fact, you'd barely know that they existed. That may not have been as necessary when marketing to a narrow niche, but Proscape's new product requires brand awareness among a broader customer group.
Proscape has streamlined the way it markets the app since its original introduction. Its got everything in one package, the "App Player". Its available for iOS in the App Store, and Android in Google Play.
Proscape is scheduled to be part of three presentations at Dreamforce '15.
Proscape
has received some good press lately. They are reaching out to the right places, such as the Philly TechBreakfast and the New York TechBreakfast. I like the content marketing pieces they've produced, and the way they're relying on inbound marketing. And being visible at Dreamforce, and any other associations they can build within the Salesforce ecosystem can only be pluses.
I don't know much about the numbers beyond what I've been told (revenue growing nicely; headcount around 55 and growing), but I've got to guess Proscape is managing the growth of the new business while trying to maintain cash flow from its older, probably shrinking legacy CRM business. Having been in that type of situation myself, I can tell you its a struggle managing that transition.
But I like the fact that buying the apps is not a staggering decision that will get hung up in corporate purchasing for months. Proscape has three pricing options for its apps, ranging from $9.95 to $49.95, but the real bite can come from the per usage charges.
Proscape employees at Horsham headquarters/
Proscape
