Spark.Orange aims to solve business problems with technology

SYRACUSE — Spark.Orange, LLC, a salesforce consulting and web-application development company based at the Syracuse Tech Garden, makes its mission tackling business problems, like customer service, with technology.

It does so by partnering with and using the software of San Francisco, Calif.–based Salesforce.com, Inc. (NYSE: CRM).

“We are a Salesforce cloud-alliance partner, which means that we have to meet certain criteria with the company in order to maintain our partnership,” says Derek Vargas, a co-founder and managing principal of Spark.Orange.

 “Salesforce.com does not implement [its] own solution. They only sell it,” Vargas says.

Salesforce is the “number one” cloud CRM [customer-relationship management] software company in the world serving companies that range in size from small businesses to Fortune 50 firms, Vargas says. Salesforce.com projects it will generate $4.05 billion in revenue in its current fiscal year ending in January 2014.

The company also services the nonprofit sector, so CRM in that case stands for constituent-relationship management, Vargas adds.

For Spark.Orange, the goal is to resolve “complex” business problems with technology, he says.

“For Salesforce, for a lot of people that means creating operational efficiencies and accelerating revenue and marketing efforts through the use of the CRM platform,” Vargas adds.

Cloud computing has essentially taken the hardware out of technology for a lot of businesses, Vargas says.

Larger programs, databases, and file storage, have historically been housed internally and networked to all the machines.

“That no longer has to happen,” he says.

A company like Salesforce.com will have “server farm upon server farm,” and manage, protect, and secure a client’s data. All the client has to do is log in through the Internet to connect to your package of information.

“The cloud, essentially, frees business of the hardware requirement outside of the actual machine you’re working on at the time,” he says.

Launching Spark.Orange

Vargas and co-owner Aliza Seeber previously worked together at Smart Sales, LLC, a Skaneateles–based boutique management consultancy with a focus on sales and marketing optimization, as described on the Spark.Orange website.

Vargas most recently served as managing director at Smart Sales, and Seeber was a certified Salesforce.com consultant and administrator.

Smart Sales had used CRM as “backbone” for a lot of its sales and marketing and management-consulting engagements, including the Salesforce.com software, Vargas says.

Calling it “eye opening,” Vargas and Seeber began to view the Salesforce software as “much better” than anything else on the market.

They believed in “how effective it could be in allowing companies to hit their revenue targets and to really accelerate marketing and make people more effective,” Vargas says.

Their colleagues at Smart Sales wanted to pursue a different direction with the company, but, in the Salesforce software, Vargas says he and Seeber “found what we wanted to be doing.”

“It all happened … quickly,” Seeber says, noting they founded Spark.Orange in January of this year, following discussions with their Smart Sales colleagues in late 2012 and early in the New Year.

Vargas and Seeber set up space in the Syracuse Tech Garden, and started generating client leads through “word of mouth” and building a presence on social-media platforms.

“That’s something that’s definitely helped,” Vargas adds.

They’re also using their own contacts and getting referrals from clients, he says. 

Growth

Vargas declined to disclose a revenue figure for Spark.Orange’s first year in business, but sees plenty of growth in 2014.

“We expect, very conservatively, that we’ll see probably 100 percent year over year revenue growth. A lot of that is due to the nature of the work,” he says.

In addition to Vargas and Seeber, the firm’s staff includes two full-time and two part-time contractors.

Spark.Orange hopes to add two full-time employees during the first quarter of 2014 and one to two full-time employees per quarter the rest of the year, says Vargas.

“We’ll be close to triple the size that we are right now by the end of next year,” he adds.

Vargas says he and Seeber are “serial entrepreneurs,” noting they’ve started their own businesses in the past.

Prior to his time at Smart Sales, Vargas co-founded Digital Events, LLC, a Denver–based design, film, and post-production house.

Vargas attended the University of Connecticut-Stamford but left the school after two years to pursue work.

Seeber, a Syracuse native, co-founded Bush Crane & Ariel Lift Services, LLC with her husband and father-in-law in 2008. She was still working at Smart Sales at the time.

She is a 2004 graduate of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University with a dual degree in newspaper journalism and political science.

On Nov. 20, Seeber was among the honorees at the 40 under Forty awards program produced by Bizeventz, a sister company of The Central New York Business Journal.

Seeber landed the job at Smart Sales when she returned to Central New York from Hawaii, where she and her husband had been living while he served in the military, she says.

In naming their business, Seeber liked the term “spark” because the firm could “have it as an overlying theme” on its website, business cards, and marketing materials.

For example, “spark innovation,” Seeber says.

Vargas, who grew up in Connecticut, suggested attaching Orange to localize it to Syracuse.

What about the period between the two words? 

“We liked it,” Vargas says.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com