Newcastle coaching platform secures AI investment from Mercia Tech

A Newcastle-based company, using artificial intelligence to help organisations improve the performance of its sales team, has secured a significant investment from Mercia Fund Managers to further develop its product and its team.

Refract’s software as a service (SaaS) platform provides managers with insight into their team’s sales conversations, helping them understand what top performers do differently, identify and remedy missed opportunities, building a library of best practice by ‘tagging’ decisive moments within calls or meetings.

The company has built a global customer base which includes VMWare, SumTotal, Dice and Tata Steel as well as a host of sales thought leaders.

The latest investment follows an initial funding round from Mercia and the Finance For Business North East Technology Fund at the beginning of 2017.

Refract was established in 2015 by CEO Kevin Beales, who was previously CEO of The Test Factory, an online assessment platform which was sold to GL Education Group in 2014.

Kevin 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.

“This investment, led by Mercia, enables us to accelerate our groundbreaking product development and grow our sales and marketing teams.

Alex Hoppenbrouwers, Investment Associate at Mercia, said: “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.”

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