FPX / Firepond
FPX (formerly Firepond) is a software and service company located in Mankato, Minnesota.
History
FPX’s origins go back to the early 1980s. Jerry Johnson owned and managed a Ford Tractor dealership in Elbow Lake, Minnesota. He was frustrated with explaining leasing benefits to farmers and the length of time it took to do the calculations to prove the value of leasing. Johnson decided to write a computer program to do the calculations and speed up his sales process. He had recently purchased a Timex Sinclair computer for $99 and used that to run his program.
After several successes with the computer assisting in the lease aspect of the sale, Johnson started adding other information required during the sales process. It didn’t take long for his program to exceed the capacity of his computer, so he switched to a Commodore 64.
Ray Tuomala, a leasing specialist, worked with Johnson and other dealers to help them explain and sell leasing. After hearing about the computer program, Tuomala helped Johnson work to improve the system. They formed a handshake partnership and packaged the hardware and software and sold it for $2,395. Tuomala placed a system in the trunk of his car and showed the system to other dealers he was working with. Several systems were sold. For a dealer in North Dakota, they traded a system for a used 1973 car. This turned out to be a fateful trade since the dealer set up a meeting for Johnson and Tuomala to demonstrate the system to Stieger Tractor management in Fargo, ND. Stieger Tractor was interested in having Johnson and Tuomala customize the system for use by all of its dealers. This provided a ready market for the product. With the manufacturer endorsing the system as their own to all dealers, sales of the system would come faster.
It looked like a viable business could be in the making. In 1983, Johnson and Tuomala decided to create the new company in Mankato, Minnesota. Their only assets were the computer program and strong desire to distribute the program to salespeople, so the company’s first headquarters was a small building on the lot of a local Ford dealership. The intention was to sell the system directly to farm equipment manufacturers, followed by implement dealers and then to branch out into the automotive and truck industries.
Since the system helped to make leasing and other sales-related topics “clear”, the company was named Clear With Computers (CWC). Product configuration quickly became the primary strength of the software.
Before the year’s end, CWC had three clients with interest from many other companies. The company grew throughout the 1980s and 1990s and built an impressive list of clients. Competitors started to emerge but CWC held its leadership position through a strong commitment to its mission.
In 1997, the company’s management determined it would need outside help to continue its growth. With the company moving to the next level, Tuomala retired to pursue fishing on Mille Lacs in Minnesota. Johnson later left to start another company focused on complex sales initiatives.
In 1999, the company changed its name to Firepond and then became a publicly traded company in early 2000. The name Firepond was selected because the company's products help organizations accumulate all of their product and pricing data in a central location (as in a Fire pond). Once the data is centralized, it can be rapidly updated and distributed as often as needed to employees who use the data for sales within the direct and indirect sales processes.
Firepond rode out the dot com collapse and the tough economy early in this decade. Though these years were challenging, Firepond believed it offered the best sales applications, especially its product configuration engine, and remained confident it would emerge intact. Firepond was acquired in 2003 by private investors who shared this confidence and immediately took steps to strengthen the company. These steps included selling non-core assets, optimizing facilities, and re-focusing the company on its original mission and strength.
In 2004, Firepond shifted its primary focus from building enterprise systems to offering on-demand systems. It released its first version of Firepond Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ) OnDemand, designed to integrate with the popular salesforce.com system. The hosted solution generated unprecedented interest in Firepond’s products.
By the end of 2005, Firepond had five new CPQ OnDemand customers and many more in the pipeline. Firepond’s database management tool (Product Data Manager) continued to be used by dozens of companies and Firepond’s configuration engine was being embedded in many other applications.
In 2006, shares of Firepond were offered on the OTC Bulletin Board.
By mid-2008, Firepond had implemented thousands of Firepond CPQ OnDemand users from a global customer base across a broad range of verticals. Firepond CPQ OnDemand is used to generate thousands of quotes every month in multiple languages and currencies representing billions of dollars in configured products.
In February 2009, Firepond announced that FPX, LLC (an affiliate of Texas-based Acclaim Financial Group, LLC) had acquired all of the assets of Firepond. The change was beneficial for the company because FPX provided a $10 million capital commitment to fund growth. While the company's new name is FPX, the flagship product remains Firepond CPQ OnDemand.
Flagship Product
Firepond CPQ OnDemand is designed for integration with salesforce.com or stand-alone use and provides product configuration and quote generation. It is used by salespeople who need the ability to configure complex products and services to produce a quote with accurate pricing and validation that the selected products and options are compatible.
Awards
Firepond was a recipient of the 2008 WizKids Award presented by Beagle Research Group, LLC. The award recognized Firepond’s pioneering work in bringing configure-price-quote features to the on-demand applications marketplace.
See also
- Customer Relationship Management
- Software as a Service
- Web application