Upshot Reaches Higher With XE Launch

Looking to extend its penetration into large corporations as well as medium businesses, Upshot Corp. is planning to release on Monday Upshot XE and Upshot Marketing at Demo 2002 in Phoenix, Az.

Upshot XE extends the capabilities of Upshot sales providing customized views of information and automating business processes through a workflow engine, according to Keith Raffel, chairman and founder of the company. Raffel met with CRM Magazine in New York the week before the release.

Upshot XE is priced at $1,150 per user per year plus and additional one time installation fee. Upshot sales alone sold for $65 per month per user.

"We have been selling Upshot XE to divisions of large corporations and medium businesses for months," says Raffel. "These companies need to improve the flow of sales and marketing information and then customize the information to meet the different needs of its different users. Not every user likes to look at information the same way," he says.

Also, Upshot XE can be integrated with legacy systems including ERP, financials, data warehouse, supply chain management systems and even some propriety applications. Including in Upshot XE is Offline Express consisting of offline access functionalities including opportunity management, forecast up dates and activity management.

Unlike other larger CRM applications that can take months to be fully implemented into an organization, Upshot guarantees to have its Web-based application up and running in about 15 days, Raffel says.

"Upshot is reaching higher," says Steve Bonadio, senior program director at research firm Meta Group. "XE opens up the framework so customers can integrate Upshot with another management system. Larger customers need customization capabilities and need an open architecture," he says.

To help enterprises evaluate their CRM needs, Upshot has also developed an internal consulting group of 15 employees to help corporations evaluate and implement the CRM application, Raffel says, adding that this group is expected to account for approximately 25 percent of the company's total sales this year. Despite the internal consulting group, Upshot works with 17 channel partners including regional consultants and integrators, Raffel says.

Also on Monday, Upshot unveiled Upshot Marketing, which works with Upshot Sales and Upshot XE. The new application is designed to help organizations utilize marketing and sales functions.