Microsoft Startup Accelerator Partner Lattice Engines, Inc. has supplied large B2B sales organizations with Microsoft centric solutions since its inception in 2005.The company has built a CRM Analytics application, POETSM, which has for the last couple of years helped large sales organizations achieve 5 to 15% growth in revenue by more optimal allocations of their sales people and sales and marketing investments.
POET utilizes the customer’s CRM & ERP data in conjunction with external data sources to model the buying behavior of the business customers and prospects of our customers. By developing a quantitative model of opportunity at each potential customer account, POET helps sales reps use their time more effectively in order to drive revenue.
I have been recently working with the management team of Lattice Engines to connect to our global sales force engine. The company is planning to do further integrations into the Microsoft stack around our latest technologies. This will enhance the product line and will also have the added benefit of creating the perfect partnership scenario between Lattice Engines and Microsoft
Up and coming startups and entrepreneurs should take note of this - Lattice Engines took an early bet on the Microsoft platform which has lots of documented benefits over open source.
They also aligning against the latest technologies which makes folks in the Microsoft ecosystem excited about their stuff (Microsoft is filled with techies who love that) and their heavy deep integrations into Microsoft platform products enhances the revenue potential in enterprise situations which makes the global sales force excited and will help them achieve scale.
So the formula for future entrepreneurs is as follows:
(1) Validate whether the solution you're building or interested in investing in aligns to opportunities identified in the enterprise. My organization can help you figure that out. We have access to opportunity maps which identify hotspots in the enterprise over the next 3-5 years.
(2) Align with latest Microsoft technologies. Microsoft's BizSpark program gives startups free software for the first three years with many additional benefits - which takes away the standard current argument as to why startups initially go to open source - Cost of software
(3) Get a few customer wins - preferably with large enterprises which validates the offering.
(4) Use the Microsoft Enterprise Incubation program to achieve scale and visibility.
For more insight into how to connect to the ecosystem - see my prior blog here
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