Tact, the sales experience platform, today announced the close of a new $15 million funding round. Upfront Ventures led the series B, with its managing partner Mark Suster joining the Board. Microsoft Ventures also participated in the new financing round, along with existing investors Kevin Efrusy of Accel Partners and Satish Dharmaraj of Redpoint Ventures. With the new capital, Tact's total funding now exceeds $30 million.

CRM has become the most important category in enterprise software. Cowen and Company estimates that CRM will grow to a $51.5 billion market by 2020, eclipsing ERP, operating systems and database markets. Despite CRM's bullish growth, it continues to have one of the lowest usage rates amongst its users, with 66 percent of companies facing significant adoption challenges, according to CSO Insights.

Tact turns a salesperson's connected device into an AI-powered smart assistant that automates administrative tasks and creates a frictionless selling experience. It does so by giving salespeople a more conversational and unified way to interact with their essential tools - phone, email, calendar, maps, LinkedIn, CRM and more - through an app, SMS or voice. This drives greater CRM adoption and sales productivity in the field, while delivering more accurate data and forecasts to managers.

The new funding will be used to accelerate the momentum that the company has already achieved in 2016, including:

Adding Fortune 500 customers like GE, Kelly Services, and The AES Corporation
Appointing its first Chief Revenue Officer, Trevor Rodrigues-Templar, former VP of Enterprise Sales who ran several of the largest revenue producing regions in North America; his teams closed several of the company's largest deals
Opening its third office and more than doubled its headcount, adding senior level hires in Engineering, Finance and Sales
Four-time winner of the Salesforce AppExchange App Demo Jam, and winner of the Gold Stevie® Award for Best Relationship Management Solution two years in a row
Being named in the Sales Effectiveness and Sales Enablement category in The Gartner CRM Vendor Guide, 2016
Receiving two new patents, with three additional patents pending
Leveraging the fundamental shift away from desktop computing, Tact's device-native, conversational architecture uniquely positions the company to upend CRM's most persistent problem and transform how people sell.

Supporting Quotes

'I worked with Chuck at Salesforce.com, and he's one of the most knowledgeable enterprise product leaders I know,' said Mark Suster, Managing Partner of Upfront Ventures. 'Beyond my respect for Chuck, what really persuaded me to write such a large check were my customer reference calls. Sales Ops leaders using Tact have seen weekly CRM usage rates go from 25% to north of 75% - it was a wow moment and a true testament to what the team is building.'
'Tact is revolutionizing how CRM tools are used with a next generation sales experience platform that integrates sales data, email, maps and calendars to improve the productivity of sales teams,' said Nagraj Kashyap, corporate vice president, Microsoft Ventures. 'Their deep expertise and robust platform aligns with our mobile-first, cloud first approach and we are excited to support Tact's efforts to drive digital transformation for CRM.'
'The tremendous growth we've had this year puts the company in a position to pioneer a new, more natural way for sales teams to work,' said Chuck Ganapathi, Founder and CEO of Tact. 'What's exciting to us is the shared vision we have with Mark and Microsoft Ventures to use conversational platforms to change the human experience with enterprise software.'
About Tact
Led by former Salesforce and Siebel executive Chuck Ganapathi, Tact is on a mission to make enterprise software more human-friendly. Tact's device-native, conversational platform is used by Fortune 500 companies to transform the daily sales experience in the field and maximize the value of their CRM investment. Based in Redwood City, Calif., Tact is a privately-held company, backed by Accel Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Upfront Ventures and Microsoft Ventures. For more information, visit tactile.com.