UpShot adds dashboard, plans Notes support

Hosted CRM (customer relationship management) provider UpShot Corp. plans to unveil Monday new dashboard functionality for its software service, offering snapshots of operational data.

Built on Microsoft’s Excel, UpShot’s dashboard is configurable based on corporate roles and individual preferences. The feature pulls together information such as forecasts, budgets and deal-completion metrics, distilling the data into charts and graphs. Accessible online and offline, the dashboard functionality is now available in both UpShot’s eponymous standard and enterprise editions.

UpShot’s CRM service is available for a per-user monthly fee starting at $65, but the company derives around 20 percent of its revenue from customization projects, according to Chairman Keith Raffel. The dashboard features began life that way — UpShot’s largest customers were requesting the functionality, and once UpShot had it built, it tailored it for mass rollout, Raffel said.

UpShot, based in Mountain View, California, also announced its forthcoming integration with IBM Corp.’s Lotus Notes messaging and information management software. UpShot has for years integrated with Microsoft Corp.’s Outlook contacts, tasks and calendar features, and in November it updated its software with integration hooks for Outlook e-mail, allowing users to move data easily between Outlook and UpShot.

As UpShot increased its penetration of large organizations, it has frequently encountered Notes use, and so decided it needed to support easy integration with both popular messaging systems, Raffel said.

Notes support is scheduled for November availability.