Empowering Sales Performance with AI
Barcelona is an easy place to attract world class talent; the quality of life, culture, and cost of living make the city a magnet for young data scientists and software developers. Which is why Barcelona-based startup Cien’s pioneering new AI software was developed right here in Barna.
Cien’s co-founders, Rob Käll (CEO), Ben Strum (CTO), and Margot Carter (Investor), came together with one goal in mind: to give sales leaders an immediate edge by using the power of artificial intelligence to increase the productivity of their teams. Headquartered in Barcelona with offices in Dallas and Miami, Cien’s AI-powered sales productivity app has been adopted by Business to Business (B2B) companies around the world.
Opened in Barcelona—a center of excellence in data science and artificial intelligence—the team worked with other data scientists to build models to help customers and companies with their buying and selling behaviors. Head of Marketing, Damien Acheson says of his product, “This app is like a Fitbit for your sales team.” It tracks the team’s work ethic, product knowledge, communication skills among employees, quality of leads, forecast of the results, and the actions and behaviors that need to be changed in order to improve productivity. This is all done using artificial intelligence, which identifies the best way for the company’s sales team to achieve success.
Acheson continues, “We help companies get a better sense of their CRM [Customer Relationship Management] data—specifically sales force data—in order to improve overall company effectiveness.” Cien provides access to users through a mobile app or browser, serving over 140 million predictions everyday, covering tens of millions of dollars worth of sales opportunities for clients.
On June 4th, Cien announced that it raised seed equity—led by a venture capital firm, Elaia—which brings its total financing to over 3.5 million dollars. With this additional capital, Cien plans to market to the United States to expand its client base. Rather than spending more money on sales and marketing, companies can buy this technology to improve sales productivity by connecting the dots in their data instead. Because there is a need for data based on sales for predictions to work, Cien is most beneficial to fast growing startups with aggressive sales teams in the middle to end of the initial growth phase. By helping companies become more effective and efficient in sales productivity, Cien reduces sales and marketing expenditures in the long term.
Cien is an active, significant employer in data science and engineering, and has received numerous awards in Spain and in the United States. Winner of the inaugural MarTech Breakthrough Innovation Award for CRM, Cien beat out some of the industry giants such as Salesforce, Adobe, MailChimp, Marketo, and Hubspot. It gives sales teams the power of artificial intelligence to increase the productivity and effectiveness of their companies. Available on the Salesforce AppExchange, Cien identifies your sales team’s strengths and weaknesses and recommends the shortest path to success.
For more information, visit Cien’s website cien.ai or follow on Twitter @cien_ai, Facebook @cienai, Instagram @ciencareers or connect on LinkedIn.
Isabella Pang is a summer intern and contributing writer at Barcelona Metropolitan. She is from Long Island, New York and attends Binghamton University, majoring in psychology. Isabella loves to swim, play piano, and is always on the lookout for new adventures.