A Newcastle tech firm which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help companies improve the performance of their sales team has secured a significant investment from Mercia Fund Managers.
Refract is behind a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that provides managers with insight into their team’s sales conversations.
This helps them understand what top performers do differently, identify and remedy missed opportunities and build a library of best practice by ‘tagging’ decisive moments within calls or meetings.
Refract, which was established by chief executive Kevin Beales in 2015, has built a global customer base which includes VMWare, SumTotal, Dice and Tata Steel.
Beales said: “For most organisations, sales conversations happen behind closed doors. Our technology helps them to understand and improve those conversations, analysing what aligns with successful outcomes and top performers, and providing coachable insight from every call for every rep.
“This investment, led by Mercia, enables us to accelerate our ground-breaking product development and grow our sales and marketing teams.”
The latest investment follows an initial funding round from Mercia and the Finance For Business North East Technology Fund at the beginning of 2017.
Alex Hoppenbrouwers, investment associate at Mercia, added: “Refract has made significant progress since the last round and attracted a string of blue-chip clients. The company is addressing a massive market with a truly differentiated product, using artificial intelligence to unlock the value hidden in organisations’ sales conversations.
“This new investment will allow the team to continue its mission of building a platform to give intelligent insights from sales conversations.”