Levementum made headlines last year when the enterprise software consultancy announced it was opening official offices in Indianapolis and creating up to 175 new jobs as part of its fast-growing Salesforce Marketing Cloud practice.

Though its new home in The Union 525 and impressive list of B2C clients like global retailers, film and TV studios, and professional sporting teams belie the operation’s relative youth, Levementum Indianapolis grew from humble beginnings just over a year ago.

Michael Burton

Michael BurtonSVP, Sales Marketing & Alliances

“We’re a team of 25 in Indianapolis along with many team members throughout the country. We’ve signed over 100 new clients, but last spring it was just me working out of a flower shop,” said Michael Burton, senior vice president. “I had a friend with a flower shop in Broad Ripple who was on maternity leave. Her shop had wifi and she suggested I just work there, so that’s where we started.”

Burton is unassuming and much too humble himself to brag about his own career, but his resume reads like a Who’s Who of the tech evolution in Indianapolis. With successful runs at Baker Hill, Angel Learning, Courseload, Compendium, Interactive Intelligence, ExactTarget and eventually Salesforce, he’s worked alongside some of this community’s great visionaries and patrons.

It’s fitting that he saw the opportunity to grow in partnership with Salesforce Marketing Cloud and found a perfect home for himself and previous tech community colleagues at Levementum, which specializes in Salesforce consulting from its headquarters in Chandler, Arizona.

Levementum currently has 25 employees working at new offices in The Union 525 in downtown Indianapolis. At least 15 more new hires are planned this year.

“I love Indy, it’s given me a tremendous amount of opportunities to work with some fantastic organizations that started here, grew here, and realized tremendous success,” Burton said. “Now at Levementum, it’s recruiting top talent that is one of our most important concerns because we’re not a product company, we’re a services’ company, and our people are what we make our business.”

Though unable to name specific customers, Levementum is already consulting with extremely high-profile clients helping them to maximize their use and integrations of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud — their specialty — as well as Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Community Cloud and other products.

Levementum has benefited both from Burton’s connections and the city’s experienced talent pool, attracting a fair number of past ExactTarget (now Salesforce) employees..

With talent development and attraction being paramount to the business, Levementum has clearly defined what it seeks in new hires with the current primary need being recruiting additional solutions engineers and solutions architects. In addition to being exceptional Salesforce technologists, Levementum delivery team members are chosen for their ability to relate to customers, educate them on the tech platforms, and help lead and create the best solutions.

“Our customers are not looking for order takers,” Burton said. “With technology advancing so fast amidst a world of options, sometimes customers don’t know what questions to even ask or what challenges we can help them solve. We work with them to create that vision, which requires soft skills on top of understanding the technical aspects.”

IEDC job creation announcement – (left to right) Michael Burton, SVP Levementum; Mayor Joe Hogsett, Doug Guilbeau, CEO Levementum; and Governor Eric Holcomb.

Growing from one person to 25 inside of a year places Levementum ahead of projections in its goal to reach 175 employees by 2021, with plans to hire at least another 15 people before the end of the year. Open positions are expected in sales and marketing as well as on the technical side, including engagement managers, project managers and the aforementioned solutions engineers and architects.

The team’s amassed expertise in the Marketing Cloud was an early advantage that fueled a lot of growth, but Levementum’s “secret sauce,” so to speak, has quickly evolved to something deeper.

“It’s not just our economy, though that is important, but our ability to tame the technology and get all of a client’s platforms to fit together and deliver the right solutions with the necessary simplicity that sets us apart,” Burton said. “We’ve reached an important intersection where our prior experience in B2C marketing for retail, travel, hospitality and financial services and understanding of the full spectrum of Salesforce products really makes Levementum the go-to partner Salesforce customers are looking for.”

Earlier this year, the Indiana Economic Development Corporation announced that Levementum was offered up to $3.3 million in performance-based tax credits and up to $200,000 in training grants based on the company’s job creation plans. The city of Indianapolis will provide additional incentives in partnership with Develop Indy.