Apttus Raises 108 Million To Grow Its B2B Sales Management System

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Enterprise software development company Apttus has recently announced 108 Million in Series C funding. Apttus helps Salesforce users to increase sales and maximize visibility and control. The company has recently opened new offices in Chicago, London and Sydney, Australia. Below is our interview with Kamal Ahluwalia, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing of San Mateo, CA based Apttus:

Q: How would you describe Apttus in your own words?

A: Here’s the easy way to explain it: we connect CRM systems (customer relationship management) like Salesforce, with financial systems. It’s part of the sales cycle for most major businesses.

Here’s the long way: with one system, we connect the 3 major aspects of the sales cycle: Quoting, Contracts, and Revenue. So let’s say a salesperson is trying to close a deal, but it’s incredibly complex: choosing from thousands of airplane parts, or microchip components, for example. Our software generates the exact right quote and pricing immediately, including discounts and approvals.

Afterwards, we generate automated contracts based on the quote and pricing, with extreme accuracy. Finally, the entire deal is connected to a revenue management process for easy billing, rebates, and payment (the ‘cash’ part of the equation.)

The reason it’s so successful and we’ve had such great news to share lately is simple: each of these processes usually take weeks (or even months), and hundreds of hours. Now, we’re giving sales reps the tools to close deals in the field, which is letting them pursue many more deals and earning companies literally millions more dollars. Secondly, by automating most of it, it takes human error out of the equation: rogue discounts, bottlenecked approvals, contract mistakes that can invalidate them – no longer a problem. When you look at our customers (including 70+ of the Fortune 500), you can get a sense of how much money/time/sanity we are giving back to them.

Q: You’ve recently announced $108 million in Series C funding, what are your plans?

A: We have a tremendous market opportunity in front of us – we’ve created tools that can take organizations to the next level, and so our goal is to meet the demand. We’re expanding and bringing in the smartest, most effective individuals in the industry, in every facet of the business, to service our customers.

Q: What do you see as your main completive advantage?

A: The Quote-to-Cash funnel we’ve created literally has no direct competition. Some companies offer quoting solutions, or contracts, etc. But when it comes to wrapping everything together into one smooth process, only Apttus has that throughline. Companies don’t want to deal with messy integrations or jumping from product to product – they want their entire revenue operation to be as simple as possible. That’s where we thrive.

Q: Apttus customers range from global 1000 organizations to mid-size companies across dozens of industries, who is your ideal customer and why?

A: Our ideal customer isn’t restricted to size or industry; we can enhance any organization’s processes. Our ideal customer is an organization that is still using a system they’ve built in-house to drive their Quote-to-Cash cycle. We need to show them the increased profits, plus the effort and time they’ll save by switching over to our footprint.

Q: Tell us something more about your global plans and your new offices in London, Sydney, Chicago and a forthcoming Japan location?

A: We want to be able to provide Tier 1 service to our customers globally. We’ve recently opened offices in Chicago, London and Sydney, Australia. We’ll be expanding to Japan and throughout the US soon as well. It’s our goal to make sure any prospect or customer can receive the same fantastic service and operational capacity no matter where they are based.

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