On 14-Jul-2022, Private Equity Firm HGGC, LLC hggc.com $115M strategic equity investment in the form of a new class of convertible preferred stock issued at a premium to Upland’s current market price. Provides incremental capital intended to capture the attractive M&A opportunity set that is expected to emerge as a result of the current macroeconomic environment. It also brings additional strategic & operational support as HGGC and Upland work together to strengthen the company’s go-to-market capability to fully leverage the value of its enterprise customer base and strong product portfolio.
10-Jan-2022, Upland Software, Inc. (Nasdaq: UPLD) uplandsoftware.com @UplandSoftware announced it acquired Objectif Lune Inc. objectiflune.com @objlune enterprise software for document composition & business communication automation. With Objectif Lune, Upland expands its global document workflow product library by adding the capability to modernize complex, paper-based documents for large-volume print production as well as automated delivery across web, email, & mobile platforms.
“We have long invested in the document workflow category and with Objectif Lune we can support even more of the document lifecycle for our customers,” said Jack McDonald, chairman & CEO of Upland. “This means we can help businesses produce more sophisticated paper documents where they are still required, replace paper with digital delivery where desired, & enable document digital transformation without requiring companies to change their legacy systems.”
While the business world becomes increasingly digital, many global companies still need to produce paper documents, either because of customer demand or to meet regulatory requirements. The challenge, however, for many companies is they need to find a way to compose, automate, & exchange documents based on content from their existing back-office systems to produce interactive business communications, while maintaining compliance & reducing production costs.
Upland’s document workflow products – which include AccuRoute, FileBound, InterFAX, & Upland Intelligent Capture – improve productivity & reduce costs by enabling digital transformation for any size business across industries such as healthcare, financial services, legal, government, & education.
The purchase price paid for Objectif Lune objectiflune.com & related entities (incl. the assets of a US reseller) was $29M in cash at closing (net of cash acquired), paid out of cash on hand, & a $5.3M cash holdback payable in 12 months (subject to indemnification claims). Upland expects the acquisition to generate annual revenue of at least $13M, including at least $12M of recurring revenue, & will be subject to reductions for deferred revenue discount as a result of GAAP purchase accounting currently estimated at $4M for the remainder of 2022 & $1M for 2023. The price paid for the acquisition is within Upland’s target range of 5-8x pro forma Adjusted EBITDA & it is expected that Objectif Lune will generate at least $5.2M in Adjusted EBITDA annually once fully integrated. The acquisition will be immediately accretive to Upland’s Adjusted EBITDA per share contributing at least $0.3M of Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter ended 31-Mar-2022, & at least $2.6M of Adjusted EBITDA for the full year 2022 ramping up quarterly as the acquisition is integrated into model across the calendar year.
Upland uplandsoftware.com @UplandSoftware helps global businesses accelerate digital transformation with a cloud software library that provides choice, flexibility, & value. Their growing library of products delivers the “last mile” plug-in processes, reporting, & job-specific workflows that major cloud platforms & homegrown systems don’t provide. They focus on specific business challenges & support every corner of the organization, operating at scale & delivering quick “time to value” for 1,700+ enterprise customers.
10-Jan-2022, Bigtincan bigtincan.com @Bigtincan (ASX:BTH) a “sales enablement automation” software company announced the general availability of Bigtincan for Salesforce on Salesforce AppExchange, empowering customers to intelligently serve up enablement resources & insights within the CRM. Bigtincan’s data science approach delivers relevant content & training within Salesforce using a recommendation engine – allowing their customers to efficiently deliver personalized buying experiences using relevant content & knowledge.
Integrated directly with Salesforce, Bigtincan for Salesforce is available on AppExchange
- The module brings AI-powered content recommendations to users in the Salesforce.com Sales Cloud & Service Cloud, with the ability to provide content & learning recommendations to every customer-facing person.
- Bigtincan for Salesforce adds to the core value of Content & Learning Hub and strengthens Bigtincan’s overall offering in the Salesforce.com ecosystem, allowing marketers to validate the value of their work in supporting sales success.
- The new module is available to all Content Hub & Learning Hub customers for an additional fee starting at $12.50 USD per user/month
Bigtincan’s enablement solution addresses the needs of sellers, managers, marketers & administrators. Sellers can quickly find the most relevant content for their opportunities, share it with their prospects, & track engagement without leaving Salesforce. Managers can deliver bite-sized training just-in-time, based on opportunity characteristics from within Salesforce, where their reps spend the majority of their time. Marketers want to know which content is most effective in order to optimize resources on popular topics & formats as well as identify content gaps across various opportunity characteristics. The Bigtincan for Salesforce solution allows marketers to validate the value of their work in supporting sales success.
Bigtincan for Salesforce incorporates their recommendation engine to assist admins in ensuring that…
…the right content is delivered to the right user at the right time…
…without the need to spend hours or even days & weeks setting up & maintaining a traditional tag-based recommender. The Bigtincan for Salesforce recommender uses a combination of advanced data science techniques to constantly update & refine how content is recommended to users.
“The new Bigtincan for Salesforce solution uses AI to recommend content & training, taking the guesswork out of your sales team’s success,” said Debra Cancro, SVP of Bigtincan’s Data Products Group. “The system learns about the way our customer’s companies & products are set up—delivering a solution that is truly unique to each customer’s business.” The solution is administrator-friendly, allowing a non-technical person who understands how the business engages with customers & prospects to easily set the system up & integrate source content repositories.
“Bigtincan for Salesforce is a real game-changer for administrators, managers, marketers, sellers, and ultimately our customer’s customers,” said Rusty Bishop, CMO of Bigtincan. “With the ease of deployment for administrators, productivity and performance increases for sellers, insights into training and content effectiveness for managers and marketers, and customer engagement notifications, companies can be confident their teams are buyer-ready and can deliver a personalized, first-class buying experience.”
The new Bigtincan for Salesforce solution enables sellers to waste no time reaching out to the most engaged prospects. Sellers are notified instantly when & how buyers have interacted with shared content using detailed engagement metrics that are served up right within Salesforce — reducing the guesswork involved in deciding when to follow up.
“Bigtincan for Salesforce is a welcome addition to AppExchange, as they power digital transformation for customers by enhancing seller performance,” “[…] Bigtincan is committed to helping Salesforce users bring to life the buying experience of the future for their customers.” Woodson Martin, GM of Salesforce AppExchange
Available on the Salesforce AppExchange.
Salesforce AppExchange: Enterprise cloud marketplace, empowers companies, developers & entrepreneurs to build, market & grow in entirely new ways. With more than 6k listings, 9M customer installs & 117k peer reviews, AppExchange connects customers of all sizes & across industries to ready-to-install or customizable apps & Salesforce-certified consultants to solve any business challenge. Salesforce, AppExchange & others are among the trademarks of salesforce.com, inc.
Bigtincan bigtincan.com @Bigtincan is helping the world’s leading brands facilitate the buying experience of the future. Everything we offer is designed to be smart, flexible, & easily adapted to unique business processes with highly personalized experiences that people & brands love. On a mission to help companies deliver branded buying experiences that are engaging, personalized, provide value & guide people to the best decisions with confidence. Innovative companies like Nike, Guess, Prudential, & Starwood Hotels trust Bigtincan to enable customer-facing teams to intelligently prepare, engage, measure & continually improve the buying experience for their customers.
Update / Edit on 24-Jan-2022: The weakness in the tech sector appears to have offset the release of Bigtincan’s solid Q2 update, where they reported a 133% increase in ARR (annualised recurring revenue) to $112M. [Some of this relates to their Brainshark acquisition.] Nevertheless, this puts Bigtincan on course to achieve its ARR guidance of $119M in FY (Financial Year) 2022.
Full disclosure / financial disclosure: As a public market investor I (Paul Krajewski) currently hold shares in both companies mentioned above: $UPLD $BTH.
Nothing on this blog nor my twitter accounts should be taken as investment advice. Not financial advice!
B2B Sales Enablement and Sales Tech SaaS 