InsideSales, Microsoft pledge to continue, expand partnership

InsideSales.com, which offers the AI-powered predictive sales acceleration platform Playbook, and Microsoft are again working together on next-generation guided selling and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for customers.

The announcement is light on details but points to continued collaboration with a focus on particular product areas.

"Leveraging the unique Microsoft social, email and business solutions, along with Microsoft Azure and the Common Data Service, will accelerate our AI robustness and product innovation, and bulletproof our infrastructure," said Steve Brain, former senior leader at Amazon, now CTO of InsideSales, in a statement.

Dave Elkington, CEO of InsideSales.com, stated that Microsoft is the perfect partner to help InsideSales continue "supercharging" sales teams.

"The unique combination of Microsoft's data graph across its productivity and business applications, together with our AI platforms, creates an unmatched solution for sales teams to be successful," he said.

Today's announcement follows key technology integrations the companies delivered last year, including Playbooks integrations for Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Predictive Playbooks integrations for LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

Playbooks brings InsideSales' sales acceleration platform directly to reps in their browsers so they can prospect, prioritize, and connect without having to use multiple tools, as the company describes.

Last year, InsideSales closed a $50 million growth equity round led by returning investors Polaris Partners and Microsoft, at that time bringing the company's total venture capital funding to over $250 million.