Topline Shines Light On Channel Pipelines

Company: Topline Systems

Headquarters: Boston

Technology Sector: Software

Key Product: Topline Opportunity Portal

Year Founded: 2006

Number of Channel Partners: Looking for customer wins among a few large channel-focused vendors that would roll its tools out to partners.

Why You Should Care: Topline Systems' pipeline management and forecasting technology gives channel vendors a level of visibility into their partners' sales processes they've never had previously, and its SaaS model makes sense in the current economy.

The Lowdown: Boston-based Topline Systems started out with the goal of building a Software-as-Service tool for direct sales pipeline management and forecasting. But company officials quickly realized that the tool would also be ideal for channel vendors looking for visibility into the sales processes of their partners.

Topline Opportunity Portal

Topline's flagship Opportunity Portal brings advanced pipeline management and forecasting to firms with complex, multi-month sales cycles. It's also designed to track both sales opportunities and the metrics around these opportunities, which makes it a good fit for channel vendors and their VARs, according to Chip Stofer, CEO of Topline Systems.

"Channel vendors often don't have visibility into their channel partners' pipelines, and they don't know what percentage of leads result in sales," said Stofer. "We're looking for companies that have large, global channel organizations, as we can differentiate ourselves readily in those environments."

Topline isn't trying to build its own channel right now, but is instead looking to win a few large channel focused vendor customers and then increase its focus on the enterprise software and services market. The company's major reference account is SolidWorks, a vendor of 3-D mechanical CAD software, which currently has around 2,100 employees and 300 channel partners using the system.

Stofer sees Topline eventually playing an important technology enablement role for many channel vendors. In this scenario, a vendor would request a single file to be sent automatically from the VAR's CRM system. In return, the VAR would gain immediate and free VAR access to Topline's Web-based Opportunity Portal and its metrics. Topline provides the central server that collects all the uploaded files, presents the data in multi-level, color coded pipelines and performs worldwide rollups for forecasting, Stofer said.

"This is the best way to transfer all the necessary fields of information from a channel partner back to the home office and to provide immediate access to all channel partners' pipelines," Stofer said.

Topline is benefiting from the economic turmoil by giving customers more time to optimize their current business focus, but Stofer says the advantages of the company's technology will remain even after the economy improves.

"We're in the sales productivity effectiveness business," Stofer said. "We show customers how to make existing sales organizations more effective, how to optimize their existing pipeline, and how to significantly improve forecasting accuracy."