At Webdam, a company whose business was helping other companies manage their creative assets, salespeople were assembling quotes in Word. Every new document invited another calculation, another opportunity for a mistake. Renewals required cloning records and entering information again. The presentation of the business depended on a small, repetitive exercise that was surprisingly easy to get wrong.
THE STORY IN THREE POINTS
- Simplus turns Salesforce into a working sales and service system.
- Its early specialty was CPQ: configure, price, quote.
- Infosys bought the business in 2020; its newer work includes Agentforce AI.
Simplus’s intervention was specific: create branded quote documents, put review rules inside Salesforce CPQ, and automate renewals with workflows and custom fields. Its Webdam case study reports a 60% reduction in renewal creation time. A dull administrative task had become a measurable business problem. That is a useful place to begin understanding Simplus.
01 The expensive art of choosing
Founded in 2014, the Utah consultancy initially worked across several software platforms. Ryan and Isaac Westwood later described choosing Salesforce, then aligning the business with SteelBrick, a quoting platform built on Salesforce. Concentration came with a bill.
In a 2016 interview with diginomica, Ryan Westwood said leaving the Domo and Workfront partnerships meant walking away from about $1 million in annual recurring revenue. Both companies’ CEOs had invested. The decision exchanged existing business for a narrower opportunity.
“It was probably the gutsiest move in my entrepreneurial career”
Ryan Westwood, speaking to diginomica in 2016
Salesforce’s acquisition of SteelBrick subsequently gave that choice a much larger platform. Simplus received Salesforce Ventures investment and began acquiring complementary consulting firms. The sequence matters: choose a specialty, deepen it, then expand the capacity to deliver it. Reading the eventual acquisition backward can make the early decision look inevitable. At the time, it involved surrendering revenue.
02 A quote is a miniature business
CPQ sounds like a department that would need a better acronym. In practice, it contains the rules of a sale. Which components can go together? Which discount applies? Who must approve it? What does the customer receive on paper? Billing adds another set of obligations after the signature.
- 01ConfigureChoose valid products
- 02PriceApply agreed rules
- 03QuoteApprove the offer
- 04BillConnect the handoff
Quest Software offers a concrete example. Its older BigMachines setup was difficult to integrate with Salesforce, according to Simplus’s case study. The replacement involved configuring 2,500 products and 15 bundles. Simplus also set up volume discounts, approval chains, document templates, and training. This was the translation of a product catalog and its commercial rules into something salespeople could use.
Quest’s approval setup included six chains, reaching as many as five designated approvers. Simplus created custom email templates and PDF outputs, then supported the change with training materials, questions and answers, and client-led sessions. The awkward details were part of the implementation: a discount needs a route through the organization, and an approved quote needs to emerge as a usable document.
Those details explain the company’s expertise more clearly than the phrase digital transformation. A salesperson needs a valid offer. Finance needs dependable pricing. A manager needs a review process. Each sees a different piece of the same transaction.
03 The people behind the license
Today, Simplus sells advisory work, implementation, systems integration, change management, and managed services. Its customers span manufacturing, technology, financial services, healthcare, and retail. The public case-study library includes Komatsu, PUMA, Kibo, and Holcim alongside software businesses such as Quest.
The business model follows the work: implementation engagements get systems running; ongoing service plans maintain and improve them. Simplus’s managed-services materials describe administration, fixes, updates, audits, and smaller enhancement projects. For a buyer scoping a project, software licensing, integration, training, and ongoing support deserve separate budget lines.
The advisory offering starts before configuration. Simplus describes executive visioning, mapping end-user journeys, assessing the technology, and building a roadmap with measures of success. For an existing deployment, it offers stakeholder interviews, adoption reviews, and a system health check. That gives buyers two different starting points: design a new process, or examine why the one already purchased is disappointing its users.
There are plenty of alternatives: a large Salesforce practice at Accenture or Deloitte, a specialist partner, or an internal team. Simplus’s case rests on its history in complicated revenue processes and its access to Infosys delivery resources. The distinction is a combination of specialist experience and parent-company reach.
04 What $250 million actually meant
Infosys completed the acquisition on March 13, 2020. Its financial disclosures describe $180 million in cash consideration, up to $20 million in contingent consideration, and up to $50 million in employee performance and retention payments over three years. The familiar $250 million figure was the maximum package.
- $180m cash
- Up to $20m contingent
- Up to $50m employee incentives
Employee continuity was literally part of the economics. For a consultancy, expertise walks out of the building every evening. The founders’ acquisition letter also emphasized preserving culture and autonomy while gaining access to larger programs and complementary capabilities. Their stated values included stewardship, critical thinking, and an underdog spirit. The deal asked those ideas to survive a much bigger organization.
05 New agents, familiar homework
In December 2024, Simplus announced its Agentic Launchpad Lab for Salesforce Agentforce. Clients could collaborate virtually, host a lab, or visit an Infosys Living Lab. Its subsequent Agentforce material extends the company’s attention from sales transactions to AI-assisted customer service and other workflows.
Its own launch guidance stresses clean data, controlled testing, planning, and user readiness. These requirements also describe the limits of the proposition. An automation project depends on people agreeing what should happen and information being usable enough to support it. A lab or software license cannot settle those decisions for them.
A useful buying conversation therefore starts with a workflow and its owner. Ask who maintains the product catalog, who approves exceptions, and who will keep the system current after launch. Those questions help establish the scope of the consulting engagement and the responsibilities that remain inside the customer’s business.
The lesson a reader can borrow is practical: pick one recurring delay, measure it, and write down the rules around it before commissioning the fix. Include the people who will use the result. Webdam’s renewal process is an example of that scale of attention. Start with the work someone repeats tomorrow morning. Count what changes.