A new product is joining the Salesforce App Exchange this week, and it's looking to change the way companies measure workforce productivity and performance said officials.
Ambition is a modern twist on the old sales leaderboard: employee competitions that replicate fantasy football to provide sustainable sales engagement. Employees join teams and compete in weekly matchups where they are scored on weighted metrics such as daily activities, conversion rates, and profit.
Companies can tailor metrics and sync Ambition with Salesforce data, phone systems and email tracking products like Avaya and Yesware. Ambition then automatically acquires employee performance data and generates a unique Ambition Score for each user.
The Salesforce.com launch comes nearly 18 months after Ambition was first founded in Chattanooga. Since then, the company has received over $2 million in investments from venture capital firms, including Google Ventures, SV Angel, and Redpoint Ventures, and graduated from tech incubator Y-Combinator.
Even before the App Exchange launch, Ambition has been energizing sales and delivering actionable intelligence at best-in-class companies and startups in logistics, software, insurance, and financial services, said officials. Coyote Logistics, Axial Financial Services and Dropbox are just a few of Ambition's early adopters.
Ambition CEO Travis Truett believes that his product vastly improves upon the typical "sales leaderboard" by emphasizing user appeal and sustainability. "We wanted to focus on three major features: team-based competitions, advanced productivity metrics, and the ability to communicate employee performance clearly and easily," says Mr. Truett.
Ambition's next move will be bolstering their software's business intelligence. The company's newest hire, veteran NASA technologist and Harvard Ph.D Rob deCarvalho, is a reflection of the company's intentions. The ultimate goal of Ambition: lending businesses a competitive edge by merging business intelligence with a novel, Millennial-friendly approach to motivation.
"Most sales competitions only offer short-term benefits, so we designed Ambition for the long-haul," Mr. Truett says. "Everyone else is trying to motivate by putting employees in a 40-yard dash. We're giving that concept a major overhaul with better competitions and better coaching."