In the strange, new world of software development, technology firm
Appropos is in the business of exploration, out to seek new life for an aging industry and boldly redefine the way companies manage their sales.
The original seven-man team founded
Appropos in February 2012 with the creation of its innovative and uniquely integrated new B2B sales platform, which gives clients flexible access to real time inventory, order placement, interactive catalogues, custom catalogues and line sheets through a front end iPad app.
From its new home at 678 Front St. NW, the software developer has not only rebranded and upgraded its platform as Envoy, but also have nearly tripled the size of its workforce since humble beginnings three years ago. With the addition of Volta, a new creative services arm, Appropos can now create custom content for clients, which can help with brand consistency for not only its Envoy platform, but any other product experience the company offers.
“We just took all these services we offer that support the online platform and the company product experience and put them under a local umbrella,” says Mark Johnson, chief marketing officer at Appropos.
With the transition to Envoy, Appropos has expanded the Envoy sales platform to include a web tool, giving users enough functionality to complete a sale from front to back in any given day through a familiar, accessible medium using an iPad.
The software developers have hired 13 new, full-time employees over the past few years to accommodate the evolution of its platform and Johnson says the firm hopes to hire two more front- and back-end developers in the next few weeks.
“We’re still fairly young,” Johnson says. “We’ve been doing this for four or five years now and our product has evolved rapidly. It still does a lot of the original things it was intended to do, but now it does a whole bunch more, as well.”
Because the age of the product itself is relatively new, he says as Appropos continues to gain a larger and more diverse pool of clientele they also continue to find new ways to expand the functionality of its B2B sales platform to have even more practical functionality.
"We go to a client and say, ‘Hey, we offer this product that does x’ and they say, ‘Hey, that’s great, but we also need it to do y.’ So we go to the next client and say, ‘Hey we offer this product that does xy,’ and they say, ‘Hey, that’s great, but we also need it to do z,’ and eventually we have a much more expansive product than we started out with," he says.
Though right now Appropos' Envoy platform is only available directly through the developers, there is potential for a new DIY app available on the App Store, but since it is still in the early stages of discussion, Johnson says the details are too foggy for any public comment at this point.
He says being part of the rising tide of new, tech-driven entrepreneurs in Grand Rapids has also allowed Appropos to flourish quickly, finding a place in a non-competitive climate that works in service of innovation.
"It’s awesome," he says. "There are a lot of organizations that are focused on getting a community built around the idea of companies like us; of these young, start-up, tech-savvy companies that we’re starting to get plugged into, which is great."
"We spent three or four years just working on our product, getting it to market, iterating, iterating iterating, then we sort of picked our heads up and realized there are a bunch of people here in Grand Rapids who are just like us and everyone seems to be talking about having the same kind of journey we’re having right now and we should let them know we're here and we're doing it."
Written by Anya Zentmeyer, Development News Editor
Images courtesy of Appropos, LLC.
Related articles:
Revolutionizing the Sales Industry
Enjoy this story?
Sign up for free solutions-based reporting in your inbox each week.