Why don't we go ahead and get started? We have a very full day today and a meeting with a lot of our senior executive leadership team that's here, that might not be presenting kinda during the breaks. I saw some really good conversations that were taking place, and I think even as we go through the presentation today, please interrupt if you have questions. And we wanna make this much more conversational than just us kind of presenting from a podium in a one-way direction. So let me go ahead and start. So certainly there's some housekeeping stuff that we have to do with respect to the cautionary tale around, you know, forward-looking statements and the like. You guys have all seen these disclaimers before.
We would just ask you to kind of supplement your understanding of the business by looking at our publicly filed documents, our 10-Qs, our soon-to-be filed 10-K, which I'm told is coming out in the next week or so. So this will be a really good exchange. We're gonna try to take you underneath the covers a little bit on our operations and how we're thinking about this massive opportunity that we have in front of us. But do supplement today's discussions and presentations by referring to our SEC publicly filed documents. So, in terms of agenda, like I said, we have a very full day planned for you.
I'm gonna start it by kind of giving a bit of an executive overview, and then Sam is gonna be talking about the public safety or SafetySmart Platform that we're really, really excited about. We've come a long way as a company from our 2017 very intentionally around integrating those solutions on top of a SafetySmart Platform. And then the team is gonna share with you the work, the really critical work, that we do on behalf of New York City Police Department, in terms of really owning their operational ERP system piece of work, and she's gonna talk to you about that. We don't talk about that frequently.
Given the fact that we are here in New York City, we wanna pay homage to that important relationship that we have with NYPD, and she's gonna also spend a little time talking about our work and leading our efforts with our ESG reports. That's gonna be a. You're gonna hear from Gregg in terms of how we think about a developing pipeline and our go-to-market motion, and then Gregg is gonna talk about all things sales, which I know you guys are gonna be very excited to hear about, how she's gonna make sure that we're successful from a revenue growth point of view. And then Larry is gonna talk about our customer success and retention strategy. This is really the operating system for us around our retention efforts and our NPS.
You should think about our customer success organization as kind of the wraparound consulting services that go along hand-in-hand with the core differentiated technology to help our customers achieve success. So he's going to chat about that toward the last bit of our time together. And then I'm gonna wrap it up by doing my very best to represent Alan, who unfortunately couldn't make it here because he took ill, and despite his best efforts, he was talked out of getting on a plane by both his physician and his spouse. And I was happy to go up against his physician, but less happy to go up against Jennifer, so we gave him a pass. And so bear with me as I kind of try to walk through some of the financial review. Okay?
Sound reasonable to everybody? Okay, great. All right, so I think, hopefully I've—I know many of you, and again, thank you very much for coming out to spend some time with us today. I've been with SoundThinking since 2010. When I first came across the technology, I was very, you know, vaguely familiar with it. Being a resident of Oakland, California, I heard about this thing called ShotSpotter acoustic gunshot detection , and when I got the call from the board to come down and take a look at it, I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Bob. And Dr. Bob is a really amazing individual, and I think when you think about our origin story and how it comes from our Dr. Bob—Dr.
Bob's vision around this incredible, powerful insight that inspires us all to this day, around how do we leverage technology to drive public good? That was the thing that got me excited back in March of 2010, and it continues to excite me to this day. I think if you talk to any of our colleagues, and we're up to about 300 colleagues now, I think they would all say the same thing. This idea of being able to leverage technology to drive public good is incredibly powerful and stimulating, and it keeps us all aligned and focused on what our mission is about. Our mission really is very simple. It says: Okay, what is that public good that we're trying to produce by leveraging technology, along with best practices and the like?
Our first category is really around the public safety gap. This is something that is incredibly, incredibly difficult and challenging. You can't pick up a newspaper anywhere here in the United States and not become familiar with the whole idea that safety, public safety, is super challenged these days. We're seeing increases of all manner of crime types, particularly violent crime, where we're focused. There are some places that are reporting some reductions in violent crime, but they're still at very elevated levels that is kind of creating a bit of a public crisis, if you will. This is a real, real issue. Then combined with kind of, I'll call it the post-pandemic re-
Post George Floyd, defund the police, abolish the police momentum, it's kind of created an environment where the policing profession is a less attractive profession to go into and a very attractive profession to leave. So as a result of that, we're seeing these very large measurable gaps in terms of boots on the ground, resources in police departments across small, medium, and large cities across the place. And this is a structural issue that's a very, very big deal. And so when you're down, you know, 10%, 15% in terms of boots on the ground, it has a significant impact.
So you have the where, you know, calls for policing services in terms of what you're asking them to do and do it in a very transparent way, post George Floyd, post defund the police, and at the same time, you're seeing this, significant reduction in resources, is kind of creating this, this huge gap that we're trying to fill by the leveraging of technology. Now, fortunately, the funding environment is very, very constructive to fund technology and even try to fund this structural resource gap, which again, is structural and won't be fixed very easily.
But technology can be used as a force multiplier to have you be able to use your existing resources more efficiently, effectively, and importantly, in this context of public safety, bringing equity and transparency in terms of how policing is doing their work, is all problems that can be potentially addressed by the use of technology. Any questions, feedback on any of that? All that makes sense to folks? So this is what we mean when we're saying, you know, we're harnessing technology to drive public outcomes or public good outcomes. We're trying to address this public safety gap. Now, interestingly, there's another interesting dynamic to kinda shift from public safety to security.
We're calling this the security dilemma, and the security dilemma, you can think about the following: so we all know that workplace violence is unfortunately a very real occurrence, particularly in some vertical industries. And you have this tension between, I'd say, the security professionals that wanna lock things down, right? So you wanna do everything, which creates a little bit of a high friction in terms of how people might move about their pedestrian experience inside of a building. So on the other end, of course, you have people that really wanna optimize around the experience of having visitors be able to free flow, kinda go in and out of buildings and the like, without any interruption or friction. And so, you know, there's the do nothing crowd.
So the tension between the do nothing crowd, which represents high risk, and the do everything, which equals a lot of friction, there's a lot of tension there. But there is a path, we believe, that one can pursue, where you can have a high degree of security without disrupting the visitor or pedestrian experience. And we're gonna talk more about what that means in the context of our recent SafePointe acquisition. But this is an incredibly powerful phenomenon, and I would just ask you to analog between kinda digital security. So we all work in corporate environments where we have that tension with our, you know, our CISOs and the like, that, you know, their tendency is to wanna lock everything down. Of course, you could lock everything down and not be able to do business, right?
And so on the other end, of course, you wanna have, you know, kind of the free flow access to information and the like, and the like, that kinda represents a potential risk. And so how you kinda pull those things together to have your cake and eat it, too, in the digital security world, really kind of comports over to the physical security world as well. So what does that mean in terms of TAM? So I think you know about us when prior to us doing our very intentional acquisitions, we're known as gunshot detection. This is a market category, frankly, that Dr. Bob and his co-founders created, and to this day, we're still the dominant player in wide area acoustic gunshot detection.
We estimate that market to be a $1.5 billion or so market, if you translate that across public safety to commercial security, campus environments, and the like, and we continue to execute very well there. We were very intentional around trying to leverage our trusted relationships with law enforcement to look at other adjacent areas where we could be constructive and helpful in having them be able to do better policing and the like. So we were very intentional around making some acquisitions that were adjacent to acoustic gunshot detection, that really kinda solved this public safety gap.
That those acquisitions became the result or resulted in our SafetySmart Platform, and certainly have increased the TAM by about $1 billion or so, and also introduced some new buying centers outside of the traditional local law enforcement agencies. So now we're kinda dealing with state agencies, we're dealing with district attorneys and the like, around some of our other solutions. So this is really quite exciting. And then recently, with our acquisition of SafePointe, that put us kinda squarely in the concealed weapons detection space, which is a massive TAM of $20 billion or so. Huge, huge TAM, and we have a proxy out there with Evolv Technology that's doing very well.
And I would just say about this particular market, this is one where we're actually kind of rooting for the competitor, if you will, because the real competition is do nothing or do a traditional metal detector, right? So this thing in the middle is the $20 billion opportunity about how you can provide a level of security without disrupting the flow of a visitor experience or a pedestrian experience going in and out. So all told, we've come a long way, I think, as a company in expanding our capabilities and also expanding our TAM opportunity, which really represents long-term growth for the company in a highly fragmented space.
If you look at gov tech in general and public safety specifically, it's a large market that's very fragmented, and we're considering ourselves to be a bit of a consolidator. So kinda going back to our origin story again, you know, the first chapter is becoming a leader in outdoor gunshot detection. In the transition, we were one of the pioneers that transitioned very early to 100% cloud subscription-based business model. We're doing that back in 2010, 2011, so we really do consider ourselves to be pioneers in that regard.
You know, continuing to execute toward that, I think, was a real seminal moment for the company when NYPD, which is known to be a very demanding customer, had their very first deployment of acoustic gunshot detection, ShotSpotter acoustic gunshot detection, after trying another solution that didn't quite work or scale, that kind of polluted the category, if you will. They had immediate success here in New York City. I think the first deployment was about 17 or so sq mi. They've since expanded several times. I think they're now over 90 sq mi deployed here across five boroughs in New York City, and it was a real signaling moment, frankly, to other agencies that, hey, this acoustic gunshot detection is a very powerful technology that can help police departments better deal with responding to and investigating gun crime.
We then had the good fortune to go public in 2017, and for those of you who have been with us since the public offering back in 2017 and have continued to stick with us, we thank you. We're very grateful for that. We have expanded through kind of making acquisitions, and I would describe that as kind of multi-product adoption. So the acquisition of the technology stack from HunchLab, which is a predictive policing solution, which is quite interesting now, we've renamed that, ResourceRouter. We acquired the Leeds company, which was doing the on-prem ERP work for NYPD, and also gave us an entry into the cloud-based commercial version of a case management system that is now called CaseBuilder.
We then, with our COPLINK acquisition through Forensic Logic, kinda moved into the crime analytics platform, Google for Cops, if you will, introducing a number of new buying centers beyond traditional local law enforcement area. And so for the past year or so now, it's really been about how we can kinda integrate those solutions onto this Safety Smart platform. And then, just recently, as of late last year, our acquisition into the weapons detection space through our acquiring SafePointe is gonna be a real game changer for us. And I think Sam's gonna walk you through some non-obvious synergies that we have between our kinda core ShotSpotter business at SoundThinking and our recent acquisition of SafePointe. And so where do we go from here?
The future is really all about our strategy, which is about kinda, you know, land, expand, cross-sell, and retain. We're huge on retain. We take a very long-term, greedy approach in terms of our customer relationships. We like to see these relationships last for decades. We're really building a, a franchise, we believe, t hat has these very long-term, deep, relationships over time, and you see that in our very, very high, retention rates. International expansion is very much front and center for us, both in the near term as well as, medium, term. And we're gonna continue to innovate around our, core technologies, primarily through our ShotSpotter Labs. Solution is really quite interesting how we've learned things in ShotSpotter Labs.
So for example, we've done some work in Kruger National Park, which required us to deploy solar to be able to battery charge our sensors, that we've now been able to kinda bring back here domestically for a commercial deployment of a large manufacturer that didn't have power out to our sensors. So we're using solar at this particular manufacturer that we can't name, but they're very much in the news, and the CEO is very much in the news around the things that he does, and so we're really excited about that. And that was something that was pulled from our work in Kruger National Park. And then, you know, we're still, you know, rationalizing, absorbing our SafePointe acquisition, but I think in the future again, we do consider ourselves to be a consolidator.
To the extent it makes sense, where there's an adjacent area that is compelling from our customer point of view, doing additional tuck-in acquisitions in the medium term to long term can be very much in our future as well, to continue to grow the franchise. Great, so here's just ShotSpotter, or excuse me, SoundThinking at a bit of a glance. You know, we've been growing pretty nicely since 2021. We've put up a very nice top line CAGR on revenue growth. Finished 2023 with almost $93 million in revenue. Again, our kind of core platform Sound. SafePointe is a $2.5 billion TAM, so we're just in the early stages of penetrating that TAM.
In a couple of key areas, we're pretty much the only provider of the solution, so we have a market share of, like, almost 100%. We've been able to put up very, very strong retention numbers as well as net basis. We're incredibly efficient in terms of our CAC. And so when you, you know, take that, you know, $0.50 or so customer acquisition cost, and you put that over a long LTV, which is represented by our retention rates, it's compelling from a unit economics point of view and really kind of helps us drive to what we think can be a 40% Adjusted EBITDA business in the medium term.
Right now, I think we finished 2023 at 15%, but we definitely see a path to get to 40%, and the reason for that is these unit economics are compelling. Low CAC, high LTV, that's what helps us get there. Really proud of our NPS score. As a company, we really lean in on the culture and process of net promoter score. That's one of the things, frankly, that drives both the very high retention rate and also our very low CAC rate as well, because those promoters tend to be helping us sell our solution to their peers. And we're gonna apply that same discipline to this amazing SafePointe opportunity.
Approximately 280 customers with respect to ShotSpotter, well over 1,000 sq mi deployed, so we've been doing this at scale for a number of years. With respect to CrimeTracer, that's 1.3 billion records that we have as a part of our platform, and these are proprietary, behind the firewall data records, if you will. They're CJIS controlled. And this is an IP company, where the stuff that we do is extremely difficult and challenging, particularly around the core technologies of ShotSpotter and SafePointe. So we have significant barriers to entry. A piece of it is the patent IP work, but then it goes beyond that in terms of the practical experience around how we deploy these technologies in real-world environments, which is very challenging.
So, let me just two more slides, and then I'll turn the mic over to Sam. So I talked about this a little bit earlier in terms of how we think about our key strategic growth drivers. It's land, get new logos, expand, increase footprint, increase lanes in the case of ShotSpotter, increase users in the case of CrimeTracer or increase use cases in the case of our case management solution. That's about the expand piece. And then cross-sell, right? So, you know, we're acquiring customers, we're expanding, we're cross-selling products. Again, international is gonna be really important to our growth, given the pricing leverage that we have internationally with respect to ShotSpotter. We're gonna continue to innovate on the product side.
This doesn't represent revenue necessarily, although it can. It's really more around how we continue to drive stickiness. So even though we don't have any direct competition in our acoustic gunshot detection space, we've continued to innovate there to drive stickiness and add value to that, and we think that's really important in terms of continuing to be long-term greedy and having that best-in-class customer retention. And then, of course, strategic M&A, not now, but probably we'll be able to look up after about 18 months or so, after we've fully integrated SafePointe, to see what else might be on the horizon. So I'll just leave you with this. As we kind of go through the day, just kind of consider these investment highlights, if you would.
You know, again, we're an early pioneer in converting to a cloud-based SaaS recurring revenue model. Very, very sticky relationships. You know, 99% gross retention with 250 public agencies with a very high NPS. That's really, really important and key. Attractive financial profile. We're just now hitting our strides in terms of the kind of overall business model efficiency. Unit economics, very compelling. Again, that CAC of $0.52 last year with very, very high LTV. Strong competitive moat. We believe our revenues and our profit stream is somewhat protected, just given our competitive space and the large competitive moat that we've established around our core capabilities with 34 issued patents, 1 billion CJIS records, years and years of practical AI experience.
We've been doing AI before it was fashionable, I would say, and again, the world-class NPS is a form of competitive protection because of the relationships we've been able to develop with those buying centers. And then I think we've demonstrated the ability to utilize acquisitions to be able to, you know, grow revenue and expand. Our platform of Leeds acquisition is a great example of that. Just the particular insight that it has given us around kind of policing and our entry into the investigative case management space is very, very important and critical. And again, the thing I'm really, really proud about is the developing of a world-class executive leadership team and colleague base that are all aligned around, you know, doing well by doing good.
We really do believe that, and we continue to lean in every day with, you know, doing work that matters, and we're getting credit for it in terms of being a great place to work. So I'm gonna turn the microphone over to Sam, and during breaks, again, I know some of us are presenting. There's a few of my colleagues that aren't presenting here. I saw some good dialogue there, so be sure to reach out to Paul, okay? Wave, Paul. He leads our engineering organization, okay?
Gregg with two Gs, as he's effectively known, he's the CEO and founder of SafePointe, and my very good friend and colleague, Mark, who we convinced to come out of retirement at AT&T to lead our project management and customer service organization. So over to you, Sam.
Thanks, Ralph. So I'm Sam Klepper. My teams are responsible for the current products, the strategy, where we're taking them forward, as well as future products, whether we buy them, whether we build them, or partner to enter new markets. Next week, I'm coming up on my sixth anniversary at the company. I've been at some, you could say blue-chip companies prior to SoundThinking, Microsoft, Intuit, Bain & Company. Great experiences, but this is a very special company. The mission that we have brings together a special group of people, and the satisfaction of seeing some of the outcomes we have through our solutions, saving lives, solving cases, preventing crime, and it's exciting to be part of it.
In my role, I focus on those types of things. We're really bringing together a platform strategy, which is more than five individual products that do different things. Our products work together, and they work individually, and we're moving towards this model of, you know, one plus one equals three or five, bringing synergy across those products, and I'll go into how we're thinking about that. Then I'm gonna spotlight each of the individual products and give you some more detail with a focus on our newest product, SafePointe. So, first, you know, two markets, obviously, that we're serving, very familiar, I think all of you are with the law enforcement market. We do focus on 50 sworn and higher, represents about 2,500 different agencies across the country.
What's new is really putting 2 ft into the security side. Obviously, we've had ShotSpotter for corporate campuses, for universities, which is a security sale. Now, we're really in the commercial market with SafePointe representing the large TAM that Ralph talked about. So we're excited about being in that market. There's a lot of sites and facilities that can take on both SafePointe and find value from that, and we think bundling with ShotSpotter, in some cases, even CaseBuilder for solving some of the incidents that happen, great potential there. And so, how do we serve these markets? It's through our SafetySmart Platform, five products. As I said, these products work individually as well as together.
It's interesting to note that we have 22 customers who are using two or more products, and we have our first customer, a law enforcement agency in Newport News, Virginia, that is using 4 of the products. So we're gonna learn a lot about how to stitch these products together better, get more information to, to customers. The way we think about it is, we're delivering better information to the customers so they can make better decisions and get to their better outcomes, whether that be saving a life, solving a crime, preventing a crime. What connects all the different products together is data, and data that can be turned into actionable insights. So I just wanted to take a moment and go through how, what, how, what that really means to conceptualize that per product.
Starting with ShotSpotter, we're taking sounds that are in an urban, suburban environment, and we're using AI to filter out non-gunshot signs, sounds, and then human reviewers to make the final decision using some tools, to determine and confirm this is a gunfire incident, and then to turn that into alert that can save a life. So very powerful, unique way of getting turning data into an actionable insight and leading to a, a great outcome. SafePointe, in some ways, is very similar, uses different technology, magnetic moment technology. I'll go through some detail on this.
Passing through some sensors that can measure that change in the magnetic field of the Earth and determine there's a weapon on the person, using AI to classify what the sensors read in, "That is a weapon," "That is not a weapon," and sending an alert to security personnel for an appropriate response. Our CrimeTracer product, which is about lead generation, Ralph referred to it as Google for cops, that is more about aggregating all these different sources of data that are out there that are CJIS, criminal justice information, lots of PII, and making it available very conveniently in one single pane of glass for these investigators to accelerate their the initial part of the investigation.
Now, CaseBuilder works really well with CrimeTracer, targeting these investigators in law enforcement departments, whether it's local, state, or broader than that. CaseBuilder is about digitizing the data. You would be. Maybe you wouldn't be shocked, but you might be shocked at how some of the agencies across the country, in 2024, are managing their investigations. Very manually oriented, Excel, Word, hard to share, hard to search and get meaningful information, hard to get connections, and that's where CaseBuilder comes in and can do all those things and connect a homicide investigator's red truck that they're looking for, that's involved in an incident, with the robbery detective's red truck that he just found as part of his case and make some connections that can be valuable to solving crimes.
And ultimately, clearing the case, and bringing justice to whoever the victim may be. And then finally, ResourceRouter. This is a product that aggregates a lot of crime data and place-based data for a jurisdiction, and uses AI to produce directed patrol plans. Where should the cops be on their uncommitted time to help deter crime, help their community? We're getting into some interesting new markets with that product, and I'll be describing those in a minute. So we're really a data-based company. This is the current state of where we are, the products we've invested over the last couple of years, making sure the products work together well. So a ShotSpotter incident happens, and it has an ability for CaseBuilder to pull down that incident if it becomes an investigative case.
All the information, the date, the time, the location, number of rounds, et cetera, are pulled into the CaseBuilder product automatically. Or you're in a CaseBuilder, and you need to do a search on a new person of interest, and you can pull up CrimeTracer within CaseBuilder to do your search and pull the information in automatically into CaseBuilder and determine your next steps. So that's where we are today, and I wanna share with you where we're headed. So what we're doing is, we're doing some experiments, we're exploring how to take all of the massive data on the left-hand side of the screen from all of our products, and to pass the. First of all, store them, but then analyze them in a data lake. We have CJIS data, the confidential data, and we have non-confidential data.
So we have to be careful about separating those. We're very aware of that. But, using AI to then pull these products together, the data together in a multiplicative way. We believe the more products you have, the more insights you're gonna get, which will lead, again, to better decisions and better outcomes. And some of the information on the right-hand side of the slide has to do with some of our anticipated benefits. So, these are hypotheses right now. We're working on this, but I think there's some interesting potential areas, particularly investigations.
More information across the products used with AI, whether it's gonna be a chatbot or just built within the product itself, to be able to get further insights, find out discrepancies in a case narrative from a witness, et cetera. So we think the investigative value, we think the value around protecting officers and more situational awareness would be a valuable area as well. So, we've started this process. It's gonna take a little time. Don't expect anything in 2024. Beyond that, I think you'll be seeing bits and pieces, and then the full strategy being revealed as we understand the value to the customer. Once we understand that, we can understand better how to deliver that to the customer and how to monetize that. So we're sitting on this trove of data.
Now with five products, we really can take action on that and potentially develop it into an additional revenue stream for the company. With that, I'd like to move on to individual product spotlights. And I'm gonna start with SafePointe, spend a little extra time on SafePointe, again, because it's a newer product for us. So Ralph described the situation with the security dilemma, and he left it fairly generic about the types of products and services that address each of those areas, so I wanna fill that in for you. So, obviously, you can do nothing. It's a great visitor employee experience. There's no hassles, there's no. It's not intrusive at all, but you don't have protection, you don't have safety.
You could go the TSA, many of us, including myself, went through that experience. More invasive, divesting yourself of possessions. It's a real event that happens, presuming you're guilty in essence. So those are the two extremes the security heads of security face in protecting their facilities. You can bring in a metal detector. It's a little bit better experience. You're still gonna get wanded, you still have to divest your possessions. It offers less security than a TSA-type experience. And then there's Evolv, really a innovative product to provide a level of security that is high, but do it in a way that is less invasive. You don't have to divest your possessions. Many people can go through at one time, so there's higher throughput.
It's less of a checkpoint experience than a metal detector. It really is, you know, the Rolls-Royce of metal detectors, and they've become an $80 million annual revenue company, with a market cap over $500 million as a pure play in this business. So we wish them the best because we have a solution that takes Evolv and provides a different, differentiated value for customers, where we take their high level of security and improve on the customer experience. Instead of seeing a checkpoint that kind of looks like a metal detector, maybe it's a little bit wider, now you have SafePointe, which has almost invisible, very discreet sensors. You don't even notice them, and you can walk freely. You're not divesting possessions. There's not a checkpoint. Our, our belief is this is a game changer.
As we talk to customers, I was with a customer this week, they described it literally as a game changer, big believers in the product. The ability to not have that intrusive experience for their employees, for their visitors, and still getting the security that is needed. So, with SafePointe, we see a greenfield market here. We'll take our share, particularly in these segments that are looking for that kind of customer experience. Ralph was talking earlier to one of you about how Evolv, great tool when you want a deterrent experience in a sports venue, for example. So you want visible deterrence. There's so many companies and verticals, whether it be, Fortune 500s, office space, casinos, hotels, museums, where you don't have to divest your possessions now. You don't have a secure.
You're not presumed guilty as you walk into these venues. These are the sensors. So on the left is. Oh, excuse me. Thank you. These are the sensors. So on the left, you see a hospital customer, you see the sensors. They look natively, they look kind of like those anti-car crash into a building poles. And you can walk within. Y ou don't have to walk through the middle of them. It's called a lane when there are two together. But they have up to a 15-ft radius if you're going around them, that will pick up the right signals. Oops! Okay. Now, on the right, a customer, this is a casino, they chose to put the sensors in these planters, so they become even more invisible.
You're just walking in, and you're not thinking, going to a resort or casino, "Is this a safe place or not?" They come in, they come in different flavors, and they provide this discreet experience that you're not waiting. A lot of people can go through at one time, they're unmanned, and this is driven through AI, which I'm about to explain. How does it work? This is at a high level. Someone passes through the sensors. The earth has a magnetic field. When someone enters an area, it disrupts that field, the person, anything they're carrying, and the system is able to understand the type of disruption that has happened.
Looking at the X-axis, the Y-axis, and the Z-axis, different orientations of the object they have on them, and if there's conductive material, essentially metallic object, it's able to zero in on that, produce a, t here's currents produced that's analog, and it's turned into a digital signature of that weapon, of that object, and it's matched against a catalog of 15 or 14 million different weapon signatures. And if it matches, then. T his is really, wants to move faster, huh? Wow. If it matches, then a signal is sent to a reviewer. But what happens just before that, a camera is checking to make sure that there's an individual walking into the building. Maybe they're walking out, or maybe there's.
These are very much in the curbside, outside the building sometimes, or many times you saw in the hospital, and a car could be parked there. So it's checking to see that someone's there. An alert is sent to security after having been reviewed by a human reviewer, and what they're able to receive on their smartphone, similar to ShotSpotter, is that there is a weapon detected. They get a picture of the individual, they get a short video in terms of the direction that person is going, and they're able to take action on that. So that's the high level of how it works. It's pretty amazing in operation. You don't see. This is all kind of behind the scenes.
Hey, Sam?
Yes.
Is, after the person is identified, is there any integration with the security cameras throughout, say, a casino, or that, that person then is easily picked up as if they were to walk around to some other directions that.
It's up to the customer. Some of the customers are doing that to see where they're going further. It depends where their next checkpoint of security is. In an office building, you often have card key turnstiles. So there are different or visitors need to go and check in. Different companies handle it different ways, depending on how much they want to spend on it and the type of venue that it is. But that technology is definitely possible.
Listen.
Yes.
As a follow-up, in terms of like, it uses magnetic field to detect metals, right? And that's the technology. What if I, let's say, not that I would, I use a 3D printer, and then I carry a plastic weapon? Now, how would this SafePointe handle that situation?
The system is designed to pick up conductive material. Often there's parts that can have that conductive material in there to pick that up. So that's, you know, that's a possibility that you get. I mean, this picks up knives as well and and bomb parts. So it's used to looking for small pieces of metallic material and pick up a signal on that. Yes?
What if like.
Yeah, the system is able to locate the individual who has the weapon. Right now, we're working on something to put a box around that person, then over time, a location on that person where that weapon is located. So for, you know, interrogation, discussion with that customer, or individual coming in, you know, to see what they have on them. They might be wanted, depending on what the situation is in the company.
One last follow-up question. Evolv, so Evolv's pitches, I could do it fast, right? In a sports stadium. How about SafePointe, like, if there's a lot of people walking through, is there, like, a limitation, let's just say?
The throughput of this is the same or better than Evolv in terms of Evolv. You have to go through a defined area with this machine that they have, and you have to have a security personnel there to look at the output. Our system, I believe it's 12 ft separation between the bollards that we have, so there's more space to you go around them, through them, so it has great throughput. That's one of the things that is very beneficial to the customers and that they talk about.
One last thing. Is there, like, stats on, like, let's say, like, the accuracy between the two, like Evolv versus.
We're about the same.
Okay.
Yeah, it's very similar. There was a question back here?
Yeah, I'm just. Is there any information around false positive rates for the visit? You know, I think I'm carrying so many things that are metal on a daily basis. I mean, I don't know, this computer, iPad, you know, all this stuff.
Yeah. Well, in terms of false positive rates, we haven't published anything on that. To date, we're measuring that, and we'll be publishing that, in the future. We're doing some independent testing, as well to get that, to get really fact-based, objective data out to the world. So, in terms of a little bit more information about SafePointe, one thing is, it's interesting, the similarity in the origin story of SafePointe relative to ShotSpotter. Ralph talked about, Dr. Bob, and how he went about inventing for social good, a technology he had developed, and was working on related to, earthquakes and locating those earthquakes using a similar technology.
Gregg Holifield was in the army in Afghanistan and was asked in these forward bases to put together a technology that would detect weapons coming towards these bases. It had to be robust, it had to be covert, not seen, and that was really the inspiration, you know, serving our country, inspiration for later on in his life, developing the SafePointe system with a commercial aspect to it. So we consider this a star in our portfolio. This has a market based on Evolv, growing at 50% a year, doing very well. We see greenfield, as I mentioned earlier, opportunities here. I talked about some of the categories, casinos we're focusing on, Fortune 500 office space. Hospitals is a big, big area for us.
Sometimes the space provided by the existing solutions isn't wide enough to get wheelchairs in. Ours is a passive system. There's nothing emitted. The other systems do emit some type of, Gregg, what would you call it?
Sorry.
That's all right.
Yeah, you know, not having anything that emits to begin with, using-
Something.
Allows you to cover environments like this, where you're gonna have frequent pacemakers.
Exactly.
Or other implanted devices.
Exactly. So, very safe product as well. So we are looking at growth opportunities here. We've hired, and Alan will talk about it, our initial sales force that is dedicated for this product and understands the security space. We have dedicated marketing individuals working to develop those opportunities, those leads, for that team. I think, one of the things that's gonna be unique in the industry, two things, really, applying our customer success approach, not just dropping the tool off at the customer and wishing them luck, but giving them the best practice of the other customers, some operating templates for how they can address alerts that come in, because we're not just selling a technology, we're selling a solution to their problem.
And every customer, you know, thinks they have a unique need, and we wanna meet those needs. The second piece of that is an SLA that guarantees accuracy, certain accuracy rates, just like we have for the ShotSpotter product. It's a guarantee. There are penalties if we are below certain level over a period of time. And then we're gonna focus on the verticals I mentioned in 2024, and then we expect to expand over time and look at other verticals as well. But we think these are the great starting verticals where the customer experience is prime. From a technology standpoint, we're using the SoundThinking platform to essentially port over the applications that Gregg's team put together.
I'll go into that in a little bit of detail in a minute. Some of the recent functionality or benefit we produced is making sure the system is secure, reliable, scalable, as we expect great growth from this area. Some of the features we're working on, I mentioned, the ability to isolate the person and then the object on the person. There's also some enhanced reporting for some of the larger corporations who are interested in this. And then the ability, again, for multi-site companies, this is one of the great things. You can start small in one facility with even one lane, and this can grow to 10 lanes, 20 lanes, 30 lanes, and more, and across different facilities. Was that a question?
Yes, just curious. What is the gross margin profile expected to be compared to the rest of the area?
Ralph, do you want to address that, address that?
Yeah. So the unit economics will actually be very similar to ShotSpotter if you think about breaking the project phases in six months.
So the multi-site capabilities, being able to see from a single pane, your entire facilities portfolio, different entrances in one facility and then different facilities, that could be across the country, functionality that we're working on. Ralph alluded to this. There's a lot of, maybe unexpected synergies, between SafePointe and, and SoundThinking, particularly ShotSpotter. From a technology side, I mentioned, there's value in putting the applications on the SoundThinking platform. You get, some built-in reporting. You get the security and scalability that's already into these seasoned applications, the front end and the back end, there's some user experience, enhancement as well. So we're in the process of doing that. There's also, you know, using some of our team resources to look at the AI classification.
That's what we've done for many years, and how can we apply some of that expertise to the AI classification that's currently being done at SafePointe? So we started those teams having discussions and understanding how we can continue to improve the AI classification. From a go-to-market standpoint, we're finding in early days, 20% to 25% of those prospects we're talking to, they're former law enforcement, they're aware of ShotSpotter. So there's instant credibility in those situations instead of coming at them completely cold. And then there's an interesting idea we had that we're starting to look into, which is ShotSpotter coverage areas are clues to where the gun violence is.
And so from a marketing standpoint, we can understand where gun violence is happening and what facilities are nearby, and those could become hot leads for us. Unique capability that we have. From an installation standpoint, we're cross-training people who are installing ShotSpotter to get greater capacity right off, right off the bat. And from a customer success standpoint, just bringing that philosophy of it's a solution, it's not just a point product, improving customer satisfaction, solving their problem, having high NPS, and getting that referral. So those are some of the synergies. I'm gonna leave the SafePointe product for now. Any last questions before I go to ShotSpotter?
One last technology question. So right now, you say that you can detect within 15 ft. Can that be expanded over time? And I'm just thinking, you know, you could have block coverage and maybe, you know, combination with ShotSpotter, I mean, really find crime before it takes place.
Yeah, I'll leave that to Greg. Beyond 15 ft?
We believe it's a really good sweet spot for where, If you think about sidewalks or door entries and, or even, you know, public spaces where you're gonna try to stop the traffic from coming in and at that spread, it's really, you know, we put the bollards, the post at about 10 ft off center and then cover 5 ft on the outside of either one of those. So again, if we were, you know, you pick any public space here in New York, you'll find it. There's very few places where you're not gonna have something that lets you enter into that, you're gonna have. So and, and the cost, the unit cost of the sensors, we can keep incredibly low so that we can continue to propagate those out.
The other thing it does is allow us, when we're working in a place like New York, where we do have all this other clutter that's happening, vehicle traffic and things are happening, that we're not sensitive on the side of it. So, you know, and, and most of the standard systems, you know, Evolv included, when they go to work in places like this, they have a hard time finding a quiet spot, and we've just eliminated that within that, within that range, and we really believe it. But there, there is some flexibility around it and maybe opportunities, but for now, I would say we've, I think we've found a sweet spot.
Great. So I'm gonna talk about ShotSpotter. I won't spend as much time, since you're all familiar with it. This is our cash cow, of course. This is our founding product. We some interesting things that we're looking at and doing is, you know, very targeted strategies towards different tiers within law enforcement. We've had incredible growth in tiers four and five, 50-100 sworn. We have 36 customers in that space, and we've had 0 churn since we started that program. So that's been a nice program for us. Gregg's team will be focused on tiers two and three. It's really an underpenetrated category for us, so he'll talk about some of his strategies there. International, obviously an opportunity for expansion beyond Uruguay.
And then what I wanted to spend a moment on is utility substations. This is a vertical we're not in. There's high demand for a solution for gunfire coming into the substation. There are some high impact news stories talking about how this happened and shut down the grid in certain areas. These substations are. There's thousands of them across the country, and they tend to be in rural areas. So if something gets shot, it usually doesn't bring down the grid right away, but it might over time, as oil leaks and cooling systems fail, it could bring down that part of the grid. So utilities are very worried about this and starting to look at solutions to become aware of when gunfire is happening.
And so, we've been partnering with utilities, with our technology team, and to take our sensor and make some adaptations. You know, we've adapted it for Kruger Park, a harsh environment, with no electricity. We've adapted it for corporate campuses. We've adapted it for schools and universities. And here's another use case where we're focused on perimeter solution. Usually, we have the sensors wide area. Now, we have to be along the perimeter. They often don't own the property beyond that, and they don't care about maybe the hunters that are shooting. They don't want that kind of alert. Even though the gunfire is happening, they care about incoming gunfire, and so that's the technical challenge we're working on today, and we believe we'll have a solution ready for pilot in the middle of the year.
And then, potentially in 2025, we could be launching, at some point, a solution for utilities. And again, we're working with partners to understand their needs really well, the reporting needs, to get field use, field testing of this type of solution. So, that this is potentially a really good market for ShotSpotter going forward. Okay, so I'm gonna move on to CrimeTracer. So CrimeTracer I have as a question mark. Area. It's a great product. It has high retention, strong NPS. It's in a market that is very competitive, so the level of growth is not the same as some of the other products. And so it's an area that we want to continue to invest in.
We think over the long run, this can be an important foundational product in the investigative space, and paired with CaseBuilder, these two products can help each other, both, rise. So this is something that's sold at the local law enforcement level, the state, and more recently, one of the growth opportunities is the federal market. And so we have some dedicated sales focused on that are new, focused on penetrating that part of the market. A lot of success with state investigative bureaus. So you take the entire state of Tennessee, and you put them on a contract. We've done that seven-figure contract. That happened a few years ago. They continue to renew and expand the term of the contract. They're so happy with that.
They have the same NPS as ShotSpotter, which is bordering on world-class. One of the reasons is all the data from the state is available to them. There's top-down interest in making sure all the various officers are using it, whether you're patrol or investigation, for that matter. So, we are focused on expanding states. We've got Tennessee, we've got Utah, and we have Massachusetts. So, look for initiatives focused on additional states coming on board. A Tier Zero pilot program, simply referring to the largest cities, focused on getting a city potentially on a no-pay pilot, initially. Most agencies who are using this, they get addicted to using the search feature and finding leads for such persons of interest.
And then once the data's in the system, now the neighboring agencies, the suburbs and cities that surround this major metropolitan area, will find value, because crime is cross-jurisdictional. So that's part of our growth strategy, and then potential AI unlocks. I'm gonna talk about a specific example in a second, or I'll just talk about it now. So an example where we're gonna be deploying soon an AI generative AI feature with this product has to do with tattoo search. So tattoos are often associated with gangs.
Sometimes you have a photo or video that shows a tattoo, and that's all you can really get out of the image for investigative purposes, and now you can use the generative AI we have with the local database for tattoos that they have and get potential matches and direct your investigation that way. So we'll be testing that with agencies this year. And then, I would say, you know, we did our first NPS study with this product late last year. And so, you know, the feedback is incredibly helpful to just know where to focus some of the development resources.
The search experience is a key area for us, as well as security enhancements, and ways to make the initial data deployments, integrating all of the data sources, faster. Yes?
What's the question mark?
You know, the classic BCG model of stars and cash cows. One of the categories is a question mark. So this is a, a product that hasn't become a star yet, and we're learning how to make it a star. So I'm gonna move on to CaseBuilder, investigative case management. This is the history of CaseBuilder. Started in 2006 as a deployment here in New York, that part of the Leeds purchase we had in 2020. I saw a demo of it and how integral it is as part of the NYPD investigative department. So it's had a lot of use and a lot of learning behind that. That company, Leeds, decided to go with a commercial version of that, meaning going to, this was a customized version, the original, an off-the-shelf version that can be used by any agency.
They called it Crime Center, and just as they were launching it, we discovered them, thought the product was amazing, and bought the company. We've since moved a lot of the technology into the AWS GovCloud, which is where the rest of our services reside. There's been some SKU development around a focused version of it that is for gun crime only, given that we have so many clients who are focused on gun crime. And now, as a result, Ralph mentioned how important the NYPD was to ShotSpotter's evolution and credibility. The New York Department of Corrections has purchased the CaseBuilder product, an $18 million multi-year agreement, and that has just kicked off. So a great history around this product and the credibility it's built.
We consider this a star product. This has incredile potential. Recent momentum, we've gone from five customers at the end of 2022, now to 17 customers as we start 2024. And it's interesting that it's across multiple categories. It's not just local law enforcement, it's intel groups, it's the Department of Corrections, it's state fraud units. All of these groups have investigations, DA's offices, and they have investigators. So we're finding the general flexibility of the product is coming in handy across these different verticals. Growth here is, you know, pursuing deeper into the verticals we've already established. Bundling, as I mentioned, with CrimeTracer, and we believe this is a product that could work on the corporate side as well.
There are investigations with the larger companies, so those are areas of growth for us. And I'll finish with ResourceRouter. So this is a question mark. You know, we've seen lower growth in this area. The market, the legacy leader has folded. It creates a situation where there's little competition. The competition is really status quo. So this is a product that we've had a lot of patience with, and we think its day will come. There's some nice momentum recently. We've figured out a sales model that is working better for us, where we have former crime analysts who have used the product. They're actually selling the product. They believe in it.
They're better able to articulate this new category that not all law enforcement understand right away. So I mentioned there's a new market beyond law enforcement with this product, which I failed to mention, is about proactively knowing where the highest-risk areas of crime are and making sure your patrol cars are positioned in those areas for as little as 15 minutes to deter crime for potentially hours. So we are taking that product to a new market, which is the community violence interrupters. They have staff that are there to prevent reactions to existing violence and help the community. And so they're people on the ground. They're often not. They get funding. There's lots of funding. There's hundreds and hundreds of these agencies.
They get funding, and they need to kind of justify what they're doing. With a product like this, that not only can put you in the right areas, but then have the reporting for what activities you're doing, for how long you were there, is helpful. We've been working with Miami-Dade, who's had a successful pilot with this and is ready to move into the paid customer status. We have another signed city that is moving forward with this, with community violence interrupters, and there's a third we have a verbal commitment from. So we think this is a new area. It's exciting.
They get a different skin version of the product, and I think that, combined with some of the new sales approaches, are gonna help this product start to see the momentum that we expect. Great! Thank you. I'm gonna turn it over to Nasim.
Thank you, Sam. Good morning. My name is Nasim Golzadeh, and I'm the Managing Director for technology and Executive Vice President for Investigative Solutions. I've been with SoundThinking for five years and in public safety for 14 years, and my current areas of responsibility include technology, our NYPD division, CaseBuilder, CrimeTracer, and I also lead some of our activities and initiatives on ESG side and ESG reporting. For the purposes of this conversation today, I would like to focus primarily on technology, a few of our recent activities on CaseBuilder, and briefly describing our ESG initiatives. Technology is an all-inclusive business unit, you know, about a 33-35 person team, and their operations and functions are solely focused on NYPD. This is separate from the work that we are doing on ShotSpotter side, on gunshot detection.
And, you know, they do all the activities from customer engagement and management to architecture, systems engineering, business analysis, development, QA and testing, help desk, and support. And even though those functions are pretty standard in our industry, the value we bring to NYPD is by order of magnitude more valuable and extremely customized and unique. And the reason for that is the level of expertise and our intimate knowledge of the operations of NYPD and our own applications that over the years we have developed for them. So, you know, close to 30% of members of this team have more than 10 years of experience with NYPD and our applications. And our core team, which is our management, our business analysts, and the technical leads, they have on average about 11.5 years of experience.
So as we have appropriately expanded the team over time, we have retained the expertise, the experience, and the relationships with NYPD. You know, since DEI is extremely important to us, you know, as a company, that, that is one of the values, I'm very proud to report that at technology, we have achieved a 36% gender diversity. That is close to three times the rating for, technology sector, and also close to 75% racial diversity. We over time, have developed and deployed, we continue to develop and support more than 25 different applications for NYPD, and many of them focus on the functions and, and capability of the police department. For example, police records management system, annoyance reporting, federal and state inquiries, arrests and complaints, juvenile apprehension, intelligence module, property and evidence, and many more.
Then we have some applications that touch the court systems. For example, warrants, prison arraignment, summonses. We have citywide applications, for example, the citywide towing application, and that is not just dispatch tow, it integrates with the finance applications of the city on the back end. And last but not least, it is human resources, central personnel management, EEO, command discipline, and administrative discipline. So we are looking at a collection of different applications, extremely interconnected, and these are very comparable with and on par with the largest, most sophisticated, purpose-built ERP systems. And it shows a level of connectivity and connectedness amongst our applications, but more importantly, within the public safety ecosystem of the city, extremely, extremely sticky and important. Talking about the breadth, scale, and volume, we have more than 30,000 unique users on our applications.
Just in the past year, in 2023, we processed more than 1 million arrests and complaints, more than 1.2 million cases. We managed more than 1.9 million articles of property, produced more than 83 million printed reports, 800,000 summonses, and 70,000 relos, boots, and tows. So, you know, these are really essential features, functionality, critical to the daily activities of New York City and NYPD, and, you know, that shows the level of presence and dependability, dependency on our applications there. You know, really, really important. We have three different revenue streams working with NYPD for technology. One of them has to do with the reliability of the system, so, you know, that is our oversight and support.
So, you know, some of the core functionality, for example, our management, our QA, business analysis, our systems engineering, help desk and support, are under this vertical, and we also deliver some small enhancements to the city. That is on an annual basis, around $10.5 million. The second stream, that is dedicated for about $4 million a year, only for development of new capabilities and new feature enhancements to the existing applications. The reason is that these applications are not just under support, but they continue to grow and evolve. Just under those two categories, last year, we completed and delivered 125 projects for NYPD. So from a velocity perspective, that is incredible. It's extremely efficient, it's extremely effective.
And last but not least, we have a third category that is work orders for very large projects or, you know, perhaps systems that do not yet exist. At NYPD, for example, this past December, we signed a work order for $950,000 to create a portal for the District Attorney's Office . So, you know, I would like to conclude my conversation about technology by saying that we are incredibly honored not to be, you know, just one of the most critical vendors, but one of the most trusted vendors for NYPD. And, you know, when you are in New York, you are in really good hands. Now I would like to shift my focus onto CaseBuilder. Sam walked us through, you know, some of the history, progression of, again, CaseBuilder and our capabilities.
One of the recent activities is the project with New York Department of Correction. We kicked that off in past November, and the scope is, you know, really the purpose of that project is creating visibility and accountability for Department of Corrections. That involves implementing CaseBuilder for 11 different divisions within DOC: investigations, trials, facilities, HR, and more. And it also includes converting historical data from nine historical and legacy applications that CaseBuilder will be replacing. We will also interface with some of the external applications that will continue to exist and operate. And we have project services, creating reports, business analysis, project management, and so forth. So, you know, in terms of the financial value of the project, we have about $6 million in professional services, and we're expecting the project to be implemented over three years.
But that is not a big bang implementation. It go live at the very end, but these different divisions will be implemented in sequence. Last but not least, we have more than $12 million in recurring revenue in subscription, and that subscription has already started. I, you know, would like to, you know, now focus on our ESG initiatives. We are a technology company, but doing sustainable, ethical, and responsible business is extremely important to all of us. You know, for me, that is not only a responsibility, it is a passion, and we are very strong on the social aspect. The reason is that our social presence, social responsibility, social impact, and human rights, you know, that is the core reason behind the existence of our applications.
That is creating more safer environments, safer communities, more connected communities, and providing equal protection for all citizens. And we, you know, do that as, you know, in our report, we reference factual and actual statistics and testimonials from our customers, and we do all of that with complete respect to human rights, and on top of that is privacy. In terms of our governance, we put a lot of focus into DEI. You know, that is, you know, certainly extremely important for us. We do report on diversity, both racial and gender diversity, at board level, executive level, staff level, and also for our technical teams. You know, it is really important for us to create an environment that all of our employees, they can thrive, they can grow, and can be represented.
From a board perspective, we have an extremely strong board from a diversity and oversight perspective, and exercising their role, you know, in their oversight of, you know, our operations, decision-making, and policies and procedures. One of the areas that we have put a lot of focus on is risk mitigation and management. For our industry, you know, especially with the type of data that we handle, information security and risk mitigation in that area has been extremely important. Another area that is very much top of mind for us is responsible and safe use of AI. Last but not least, it's about employee engagement and ensuring that we create a great place to work for them, as SoundThinking has achieved in the past six years, the designation for great places to work.
On environmental front, we report on, you know, those aspects that are applicable and relevant to us. For example, our electricity consumption for the sensor arrays, which is extremely low. And also, we augment that with some of the capabilities, for example, the solar, you know, energy, you know, that type of capability, our responsible recycling and waste management. And, you know, there is something unique about us, that we can and we have used our technical capabilities to protect the environment. And some of the examples include Kruger and also the work that we are doing in Malaysia for protecting the coral reefs against fish bombing. So, you know, those are some unique aspects to who we are and what we do.
In our 2022 report, which was our second year of reporting, we started in 2021, and this year will be our third year, we provided references to UN's sustainable developmental growth in ten different categories. With that, I conclude my portion of the presentation. Any questions you may have?
Yes, all the programs that you're creating for NYPD, is that owned by NYPD, or can you sell it to other cities? And if you can, you know, how easy is that process? I mean, do other cities have the exact same things you using somebody else?
Sure. That is a great question. The applications that we have developed for NYPD, they are owned, the source code is owned by NYPD. However, you know, because of the know-how, because when you look at the scope of what we have created, we know how to do that, we know how to scale that. So, you know, a perfect example of that is CaseBuilder coming from a Enterprise Case Management System, but we have the capability to do similar work for other applications.
Possible to convince NYPD to license this and sell it to other people in their world?
You know, I think, you know, that, you know, may be a possibility. However, many of these applications, they are, you know, built based on that scale and very customized, but that would be NYPD's decision.
We are leveraging that knowledge base, particularly the DOC CaseBuilder components, and taking that show on the road, if you will, to other DOCs in different states. Orleans Parish down in Louisiana just purchased CaseBuilder from us, and it's a DOC development. So there's a lot of synergies and, and a lot of learnings that we can take and explore with other clients. And the knowledge base, to Nasim's point, that we've learned by building this for New York, is being transferred to other clients. So-
Yes.
That's part of the sales strategy is to sort of take those use cases and then bring them to.
And there is another, you know, important point, that for the work that we are doing for New York DOC, all of that is owned by us, so there is nothing customized, you know, only owned by New York Department of Corrections. So all the enhancements, you know, anything that we do for that project, it will be available, is available to the customer base, and that is a great opportunity to, you know, just make it, make the product more feature-rich. And you know, plus, you know, just that presence, the reference to NYDOC opens up a lot of other opportunities for us. Yes?
Can you speak to, I suppose, the gross margins for what you're doing for NYPD? And then also what you're doing for CaseBuilder more broadly. And then also, just to be sure, how large is the team that's focused on CaseBuilder rather than technology? Or are they one and the same?
They are not the same. So technology is completely.
Sorry, can you just repeat the question so everybody.
Definitely, definitely. So there were, you know, I believe two or three different questions. One of the questions was, you know, are technology and CaseBuilder the same team? They are not. You know, for NYPD, they are completely dedicated to NYPD. There is a lot of collaboration, but we keep that separate from CaseBuilder. CaseBuilder is around a 25-person team, completely separate, and they have their own development team, QA functions, and you know, other, you know, functions within that division. The other question was about the gross margin for technology, and I will not answer that question. The reason is that that is picking one particular, you know, customer, and I don't believe that that is appropriate for us to disclose that. That is not public information. Any questions? Great. So I invite you to taking a 10-minute break.
We'll be right back and then continue with the rest of the presentations. Thank you.
Right. Okay, good morning, everybody. I have the enviable position of being the last presenter before the break, so I will try to power through this in an expeditious fashion. My name is Gregg Makuch. I lead the marketing organization here at SoundThinking. As my colleagues before have expressed, super, super proud and privileged to sort of be in this role, and be with the company, and really believe in our mission. Our job, plain and simply, is to generate awareness, try to tell our positive story, mitigate the negative falsehoods that are out there in the marketplace, and really set ourselves up with our ideal customer profile prospects for pipeline and opportunities which ultimately drive customer acquisition with Erin's team.
Together, the marketing team, and the sales team, and the customer success team, we all consider ourselves part of one big revenue team, if you will. We're just different sides of that particular function, and we work very closely with each other. In terms of our goals for this year, we are looking very specifically at a booked ARR number of $26 million across all SafetySmart platform products and solutions. For my team in particular, we have a specific sales development function, and their role, and their objective and their targets are what we defined as discovery calls.
So those introductory calls with a prospect to understand the challenges that that prospect is facing, understand the problems, and whether or not we are a good fit for that. And then from there, it becomes a qualified opportunity, or moved to nurture. And for us, we have a very specific goal of 612 discovery calls across the team and across the safety, all the different solutions, and we feel pretty, pretty confident that that will drive our booked ARR goal for the year. In terms of. Yes?
Is this gonna be on your website, like the Investor Day presentation or.
Will this presentation be available? That's my understanding, that it will be publicly available, yes.
Okay, thank you.
Yep, so you don't have to take every specific notes. In terms of the themes that I like, we've put in place for this year for the marketing function, problems, not products. We'll talk a little bit about what that means. Influence the narrative to the degree that we can. Really get out in front of major milestones and deals. Use technology and tools to be very precise. Personalize when needed. Use things like geofencing to understand how we can target specific communities and areas. And really permeating all the things we do are the building of the pipeline and helping Erin's team succeed. Just really quickly, what do these themes, how do you guys think about them? Problems, not products, it's a little bit tongue-in-cheek.
It's really a mindset around, let's think about not features and functionality and gee whiz technology, but what problems and challenges of our customers are we really trying to solve? How can we measure success together by solving those problems? An example is, you know, certainly ShotSpotter saved lives, a very specific objective, a very specific challenge in many of these, you know, these communities in which we serve that are plagued by gun violence. So, that's an example, and we'll permeate that throughout our different marketing activities and work streams. Influencing the narrative. So, if you've followed the company a little bit, you know specifically our gunshot detection service, ShotSpotter, is can be polarizing. Let's be very, very candid about that.
We feel that that is many times misinformation, it's misinformed, a little bit specious, and really what we're trying to do is we respond to that both on a reactive basis and a proactive basis. This is an example of a proactive piece, an op-ed that was placed in Chicago in January, that Ralph penned, and I think a very powerful piece. We will do more of these things again, to sort of tell our side of the story, which we think is a very positive and fruitful story for the community.
In terms of getting out in front, this is just really all about as the business expands, as the business gets a little bit more complex, how do we understand what's coming up, milestones, renewals, major deals that are, that are in process, and really begin to mobilize resources and activities at ahead of those to build support, understand any opponents that may be we may be facing, and do, and, and have a plan to mitigate the impact of those opponents? When we talk about precision and personalization, a great example I think of this, is something that we we deployed as on a test basis a couple of times in 2023, which was really a community information support education campaign.
We did it in Oakland, and really we were able to sort of geofence and be very precise in terms of our targeting of the really the general public in Oakland around the value of ShotSpotter, the value that it brings to the community in terms of addressing, you know, victims and others, on a very precise manner. We picked up, during this process, some very compelling and really heartbreaking, sometimes, personal testimonials. Here's one, for example, that a woman provided: "ShotSpotter saved my grandson's life. It picked up the shots, and they found him within minutes. He had been shot 27 times. He's alive." This is a verbatim, and you really just. You just can't make this up.
It's really life-changing in so many ways for specific people and families. So we shared this with civic leadership in Oakland, and you know, I'm happy to report that we believe was a contributing factor to getting the Oakland renewal back in 2023. And then finally, this is the breadth of our activities, going from awareness all the way to engaging, all the way to discovery calls, and building that pipeline, which we then pass over to Erin's team. But this is really how we think about the business and the marketing function here, sort of through brand and using content, as well as thought leadership and specific demand gen activities and work streams.
Okay, so I talked a little bit about what we need to achieve in 2024, 612 discovery calls to really support our number. How confident do we feel about that? Well, in 2023, we had a goal of about 276 discovery calls, and we actually overachieved on that by about 63%. So we feel confident that with even with an expanded team, actually, on the sales development side, that we'll be able to hit our 612 goal across both the public sector and the commercial sector. Commercial primarily being SafePointe at this time. And I'm happy to say in the first two months of this year, we've hit this.
We've hit our goals for both January and February. So highly encouraged by that and our process there. Our go-to-market strategy across each of our solutions. I'm not gonna go through every single tile here, but this will be available for us or for you, as a reference after today's conversation. But really, I say that the top level here, the top row, is really our targets, our specific industry verticals and/or specific segments within the law enforcement vertical, for example. For ShotSpotter, we certainly support the strategics on Erin's team, so these are the Dallases and the Philadelphias of the world.
But my team specifically, the sales development resources, are looking to help really increase our penetration in what's called Tier Two and Tier Three, which is about 450 or so agencies across the United States. Right now, we're penetrated in just about 10% to 15% of those. So you can see there's some nice upside there. Sam talked about SafePointe in terms of our target verticals there. CrimeTracer, we do have some what we call established beachheads, which is some sort of a critical mass of users in a specific geographic area, that could be a county or a region. And sometimes there are gaps within there.
Those are really ideal prospects for us, because it's really a network effect type of approach with CrimeTracer. The more participating agencies there are in any specific jurisdiction or area, the greater the value becomes for all participants. CaseBuilder, we talked about, Sam talked about too, and so did Nasim, in our plans there. And then ResourceRouter, we're gonna use our land and expand opportunity as well, amongst our ShotSpotter customers primarily. Okay? Messaging and find-messaging is related here, and then our value proposition, value points are below. In terms of our targeted personas, we've got public sector and commercial, and across these different dimensions, specific ICPs are our ideal customer prospects.
There's also a set of influencers, and specifically in public sector, community groups and the general public also have a role to play in getting a successful deployment and implementation and sale. So you can see the usual suspects here in terms of our prospects and influencers for the public sector. What's new for the businesses, certainly in 2024, is the commercial space with SafePointe. So we're looking at chief security officers, risk management professionals, HR facilities. And influencers could include architects, security consultants, tribal leadership for those gaming organizations, as well as school district leadership. Okay, just a quick example on what we mean by, "Hey," we talk about it's all about pipeline. Well, what does that mean?
Well, we have a content team as well, and the content team can really describe and create assets that help our really help our sales organization. That is one of the primary purposes, but also can do something called bottom of funnel content. What we want to do is try to create content that ranks highly in search for very specific terms that can reflect the intent of a searcher that seems to be in the market for a particular solution. So in this case, these are examples of content we've created for weapons detection. If someone's searching for these types of terms, Evolv alternatives, Xtract One alternatives, touchless security screening systems, best casino security systems, we rank highly for those terms, and then ultimately move them into the website.
We, the article or the piece of content is consumed, and then we can also understand, based on our analytics, what types of organizations are visiting those specific pieces of content. So just an example here, some of our top articles attracted organizations like Banner Health, North Shore University Medical, Walt Disney, Carnival Cruises, Marriott, Hyatt, Kaiser, Harvard University. These are all organizations that we really want to meet, and we want to understand what their challenges are. So this information is handed off to both our sales development team, as well as Erin's team, for specific follow-up to understand what their challenges could be. I'd like to take just a second to w e talked about trying to influence the narrative.
There are some things that are out there that are more negative than we would like, specifically around our gunshot detection business. So we've been very intentional starting in 2023 to really utilize social media more to tell our side of the story, and really up our presentation and professional expertise around this. So these are just a couple examples of what that looks like, and it really has helped sort of, again, position SoundThinking and ShotSpotter specifically around the types of values and mission that we're all about, as well as the value that we bring to communities. And we've had.
We think we've had some really solid success in the last six- last five or six months of 2023, so we'll continue to use this expeditiously to influence, again, that narrative out there. And then finally, a little bit on earned media and thought leadership. Again, this is an opportunity to help set the stage, help provide air cover, if you will, for support, both at the civic leadership level, as well as within the target prospect customers level, like law enforcement. And just a little bit on 2023, it could be challenging for sure, but what's encouraging that we were able to pull up through some of our analytics tools is that in 2023, some of the adjectives used with the ShotSpotter base term included things like effective, save, fast, precise.
So four out of five of those top descriptor terms were what we think are positive attributes, and things that we wanna be re- we want to be associated with. There is controversial in there. We're trying to move that down the list. We're trying to make that less of a something that gets associated with us in the public publication level, and we think we're making progress against that. And then finally, I'll just conclude a little bit with an example of some proactive media and some proactive outreach that we're really, really encouraged that just hit, I think, a day or two ago.
So Albuquerque Police Department put out a press release related to what they call the SHOT program, ShotSpotter Hotspot Organizational Tracking, I believe, Organized Tracking, which is really an expansion of their footprint in the city of Albuquerque, because they've had such success with their pilot program. And they're telling us that it led to a 47% decrease in gunfire within that specific pilot area. So, highly encouraging. We'll, you know, we're gonna amplify this, of course, and this is something also we're going to try to work with our other customers to see if they can share these types of best practices, and emulate these types of successes in their own jurisdictions. I went through quite a bit in a short period of time. I'm sorry if I went fast, but, any questions on this? Hi.
Hey, Greg. Thanks for the update. On the, I know in the early example, you talked about. Y ou shared with us the Oakland example, where, you know, the renewal campaign, right?
Yes.
Obviously, the no doubt question in Chicago, right?
Yes.
Can you talk to us, like, what are you doing on the ground in Chicago to, I guess, better position SoundThinking, you know, post-November?
Well, we're doing?
Just be sure to repeat the question. Okay, so.
Yeah, so the question related to what we are doing on the ground in Chicago that potentially can influence some of the activities there, and ultimately a decision between now and November, and then maybe even after November? So, happy to describe this. We have a multifaceted strategy there, including different parts of the SoundThinking team. It's already begun. We're working very closely with CPD to really drive some more transparency and visibility on specific metrics, success metrics, specifically around not only what ShotSpotter data can provide, but how that relates to associated 911 calls, for example.
In our early previous analysis, it suggested that a vast majority of gunfire incidents in Chicago specifically were not covered by 911, that they received no accompanying 911 call up to 80%-90%, actually. So we are working with CPD to basically make that more sort of instrument that into a more public-facing availability, and we'll be happy to report on that. We're also working very strongly with outreaching with the community, community groups and civic leadership in Chicago, including a majority of the aldermen. There's a 50-person aldermen City Council, as many of us know.
So, many, a majority of those it's been communicated to us, are ShotSpotter supporters, almost certainly, if it's in their district, a very, very strong supporters, and they are hearing from their constituents. So we will continue to build those relationships and support them as they seek to continue on with the ShotSpotter service. Hope I answered that. Any other questions? Okay, we have a 10-minute break, I believe, so when we get back, we will kick off with Erin, and she'll talk a little bit about our sales motions.
Maybe about me. Okay, so great! We'll get started. Really, I'm gonna be focusing on the sales organization and the evolution that we're going through with respect to that sales organization from a scale and digging deeper. Then we're gonna talk about some of the sales motions and go-to-market strategies. Again, thank you, Greg, for teeing me up well, and Sam, on that. So with respect to the sales organization, this is how we're structured. We've got a public sector team that's focused on most of the elements of the SafetySmart Platform, as well as the ShotSpotter component, and that's still geared heavily towards public sector, which is, you know, again, mostly PD, but also getting into some of the other investigative units, DOJ, state agencies, federal space, all of that.
And then we've also got international sales, and right now, our key strategy from an international perspective is on ShotSpotter because we feel like that's the biggest sweet spot we've got and the biggest need that's out there. Our target area is Latin America and the Caribbean at this point in time. Doesn't mean we won't expand beyond that, but that's really where our focus is right now. Then we've got the commercial side of the house, and I say commercial because we're really focused on non-public sector, but that's primarily SafePointe. And at this point in time, while there are other use cases, I see CaseBuilder being able to transfer into the commercial space or private sector. Our focus is heavily on SafePointe because the TAM is so phenomenal and because I think that there's significant opportunity for us to grow and scale in that arena.
That's our primary priority. And then we round out the team with the sales, operations, and solutions support folks that really are there to provide the support from a data and analytics, as well as the technical expertise to aid in the sale. So our solutions team goes out with our sales directors and really does the deep dive. They've got backgrounds that are in law enforcement or on the commercial side of the house, on the safety and security side, that can really add that use case component. Sorry, Larry, I'm stealing your thunder on the customer success directors as well. So we've aligned that intentionally at this point in time. So let's get into some of the internal sales motions.
This has been the primary focal point for us at this point in time. I've been here now for six months, and I'm pleased to say that this is certainly not a rip-and-replace program for me. This is really refining and scaling that we're working through at this point in time. So last year, organizationally, we rolled out a philosophy and a methodology around the way we interact with, frankly, ourselves, but also our customers, and that was based upon the book by David Maister, Trusted Advisor, and that the core elements of that are really becoming that subject matter expert working with them. And so this year, at our kickoff, we took that to the next level, and that really is Same Side Selling .
This is another sales methodology that takes the trusted advisor concept and puts the tactics around it and the execution associated with that. So we're working really hard, not only with the sales team, but we're bringing elements of that into every part of the organization so that we have very similar vernacular. The customer success team is actively engaged in that, as well as the marketing team from a sales development perspective, but also content generation. And the core elements, really, with respect to Same Side Selling , is to get on the same side as the customer and really focus in on problems. So we're solving problems. We're identifying the issues and the challenges and the importance of that and the impact of that with our customers, and not selling.
It's a 180 mind shift to really not hone in on our quota, not hone in on what we need to do, but really hone in on what's good for the customer and have that subject matter expertise concept built into everything that we're doing. The other element that I would point out is that the end of the process for sales is no longer a PO and a closed deal. It really is in understanding what the metrics of success is, what does good look like, and then building plans with our customers to make sure they're achieving that. That's the end game. That incorporates the elements of what Larry does on a regular basis, but also what the sales team can do and bring to the table to make sure that our customers are successful.
And that sounds very altruistic, and it is in many ways, but the opposite side of that for us really is that's where the long-term greedy concept comes in, where we are truly helping to build their business. They become stickier. The average sales price generally goes up. If we're utilizing all these elements and focusing on the solving of the problems piece, what we also see is that, from a statistics perspective, the cycle time for a deal shrinks because you're really honing in on the right customer. We're not gonna be a fit for everyone, and so we're looking at qualifying and disqualifying faster, and then really focusing our energies where we can be successful. And then here's the data geek in me, metrics and KPIs.
My team is very focused in on dashboards we've created to really look at both lead and lag indicators of success and where we need to be. We've, you know, we've broken down from my quota's X, how much pipeline do I need? And if I have to get this much pipeline, what does that mean in terms of meetings, and what does that mean in terms of time prospecting? And really getting it down to measurable, tactical elements that are done on a short-term basis to be able to ensure success from a long-term perspective.
So these are some of the KPIs that we're looking at and focusing in on and truly exploring on a day-to-day basis, and understanding what we're doing well and why, and the whys around that, so that we can transfer that to other people who may be struggling in specific areas. Then, in terms of the platform focus, this is an ongoing evolution, and it started really probably last year, a little bit in 2021, as we started acquiring companies, is really figuring out how that. Sammy, everybody's stealing my thunder here.
The one plus one is three or five, and taking that out to the market, to be able to explain to a customer why dealing with one vendor and bringing these disparate systems that they're using today, or manual processes that they're using today, into one system can provide tremendous value to them and help their operations so that they can meet their goals. So we have rolled out a tremendous amount of tools recently to facilitate all of these elements of what I feel are the building blocks for success, and a lot of this has to do with making sure that there's collaboration internally. I don't think there's a day or a week that Greg and Larry and I aren't all talking about making sure that the right hand knows what the left hand is doing.
We look at this sort of as a track relay, where you've got the baton and somebody starts running, but you're not stopping until that handoff is hard and solid, and so we're doing that. Sales is the receiver from the sales development team, and then the handoff goes to Larry. But there's elements of sales that stays throughout the customer life, just from a continuity and an evolution perspective of the life cycle with our customers. So here's the sales organization, just from a resource perspective, and where the resources are aligned at this point in time. Obviously, the public sector side of the house has the lion's share of our employees. That will continue to evolve and grow as we continue to expand and proliferate in the commercial space.
But we do have a dedicated sales force for our commercial SafePointe sales, and, and that's what they do all day long. Their expertise and background is in enterprise selling, as opposed to the government sale process. Because the processes, the personas, the use cases, and the motives for an organization just vary public to private sector. And then also, we have, as mentioned earlier, the international sales element. Foundation of this is really where the support teams come in to really aid and assist and create that heightened level of professionalism for the rest of the team. And we are bookings driven, as opposed to revenue recognition, so our quotas are based on annual booking numbers. So let's get into our external sales motions.
On the public sector side of the house, you'll see this little graph, and this is really the concept of we've got a huge asset in that we've got over 160 customers that are ShotSpotter customers, and we have those relationships and the deeply ingrained systems built in and processes with those clients. So we're utilizing that to expand and bring in other elements, as I mentioned, of the SafetySmart Platform. So that's a huge part of how we're continuing to grow on the non-ShotSpotter side. This doesn't mean that we're ignoring the ShotSpotter side of the house, but this enables us to really have deeper discussions around how there is that coalescence of the ShotSpotter technology with our other technology, leading to cross-sell and upsell strategies. We also are taking into account geographic expansions.
So I think Greg mentioned on the CrimeTracer side of the house, that there's a beautiful use case around a geographic region, regional or statewide, because you get to leverage the data. The reality is, crime doesn't happen in a city and stay in one city. There's movement into geographically similar areas, and so the benefit of bringing, say, the Bay Area and all of the surrounding cities around that together to utilize the same data, just provides them much more robust tools, if you will. So we've definitely got that. Same thing works on the ShotSpotter side of the house, from a geographic perspective. Then, we're utilizing technology upgrades.
You know, we've enhanced services tremendously on both the CrimeTracer and the ResourceRouter side of the house, and so we are utilizing that to bring on new customers and also to upgrade existing customers who may have been on COPLINK X , now to get onto the CrimeTracer program. Funding programs, that's an area that is a differentiator for us in that we have expertise, and we bring in outside expertise to help our customers with funding. One of the major objections that often comes up is, "Well, I can't afford this. I don't have the money to do this." Well, we can help you with that.
So we leverage the resources and the knowledge and expertise around the different federal funding programs, state funding programs, and bring that to our clients as a resource so that that isn't an objection for them, and so that we can overcome that. So in terms of the way we're going to market, is we're really honing in on a couple key elements, and that's really client engagement, deployment, and success criteria. I said earlier that not every client is perfect for us, and it's our job to really figure out the ones that are and the ones that are gonna be successful with the tools that we provide.
The tools are going to be successful, but you can, you can provide a tool, and if no one uses it, or if they don't use it correctly, or if they aren't leveraging best practices, it's not gonna work for them. And so there are specific elements that we've seen that have made people successful in working with our products and getting the results that they're ultimately looking for. And so that's where we're doing a tremendous amount of discovery, and then the ongoing account management functions with respect to our clients around this. So key elements I would bring up is really from a client engagement perspective, we need that strong champion. We need, in the case of, of ShotSpotter, we need community advocacy.
Those are keys to ensuring that this is the right client, that the products are going to work effectively for that client, based on the specific, unique nuances that they deal with from a community perspective. Deployment, one of the things that I think is critical is transparency, and I think that that's driven. It's driven from sociological issues going on in our society, and so the ability to really present the information and make that public, has been a key factor in the success of many of our clients. Constant education. That goes beyond the walls of a jurisdiction of a police department or a detective unit. That goes out into the community and making sure that people understand what it is that these, that our customers are using and what it's not.
And so oftentimes, you know, we get called a surveillance tool. Well, we're not a surveillance tool. A camera is a surveillance tool. And so making sure people are aware of what, what our systems do and what they don't do, I think is, is critical. And then working to make sure that standard operating procedures are in place. Everyone's gonna have different issues and nuances, but we bring the depth and expertise from all of our customers that we can provide to our customers, so they have benchmarking standards, and they have best practices, and they can adopt that based upon, again, the, the issues that they're focusing on. Okay, so a little bit about CaseBuilder and CrimeTracer and some of the things that we are honing in on.
The question came up about New York City and being able to leverage some of the things that Nasim's group has been doing and being able to take that show on the road. We are doing that with the NYC or NYDOC use case. We're learning and building in the processes for DOC, and New York DOC versus even something like an Atlanta DOC is going to be different. New York is a beast, and what they do has complexities and layers and nuances that other areas just don't have. However, it's probably the most complicated task that we could undertake, so if you can do it for that, it's most of the time stripping down those use cases for other clients. We're definitely seeing success in bringing that to the market from a DOC-specific area. Department of Justice, we're doing the same thing.
We're leveraging probation use cases, and even if, as Nasim mentioned, even if the code is proprietary to New York, it's the knowledge and the expertise internally from a development perspective that we can also still bring to the table for our other clients, and that is a huge benefit. The other piece with CrimeTracer is CrimeTracer and CaseBuilder are like perfect best friends. They work very, very well together because there are so many elements of when you're doing the research on a case, you got to build the case after that. So you start with CrimeTracer from a data pool perspective and get all of the power and the elements of the multiple data integration pieces, and then you can actually manage that case through the CaseBuilder solution.
So we're working on utilizing our customer base in both directions to provide just a stronger platform for our clients. CrimeTracer, we are looking. We've got some huge success. I think Greg had mentioned statewide deployments, and Tennessee specifically is a prime example where the entire state has access to the data. That's pretty powerful, again, because you see people committing crimes going all over in the area. So we're looking at that from a statewide basis, also regional. So the tri-state area is a good example where that would make sense to be able to utilize that and bringing that to our customers. And then we also are focusing in on the federal element with respect to our applications. CrimeTracer is uniquely positioned to do very well in the federal space. Federal is relatively new for us, so I'm not expecting exponential growth this year.
We're building pipeline in that area, but we are seeing some traction around that. Personas and messaging, Greg did a phenomenal job going through all the personas, so I, I don't wanna belabor this, but we do definitely see that the collaborative benefits of our products together is a, a powerful use case. So moving on to international. International, our, our strategy and focus hasn't been, let's go after the biggest, meatiest country out there and try and penetrate that. We're looking very, very specifically and very deliberately at where we're going to find the most success. I mentioned earlier that our focus right now is Latin America and the Caribbean, and we've taken multiple elements from ranging from political stability to economic stability, to, stability of the police department and how it.
whether that's a source of power in the country or not, and then meshing that with violent crime data. So this tiny, tiny little eye chart is really focused in on homicide rates by country. You'll see, Venezuela is the top from a homicide rate, but that isn't really fitting our model and our mode based on the other factors. So right now, and I think all of you are aware that we rolled out Montevideo in Uruguay last year. I don't think anybody who thinks about Latin America and the target market would initially say: "Man, Uruguay. If I get Uruguay, I'm set." But Uruguay was truly phenomenal for us because they're a financially stable country, they're politically stable.
They do have a crime issue in specific areas, and their police department is respected and well connected within the government and the community as well. So it did turn out to be a perfect, a perfect partner for us to grow and expand. They're seeing tremendous results down there and publicly acknowledging that in the media and with press releases. So that is the area for us. We're also looking at Ecuador, Colombia, Mexico. We're sort of putting a little bit of a pause on Mexico until the election is over, just to make sure that we're still revalidating the political infrastructure and the stability elements of that. So this is SafePointe. So let's get into SafePointe and some of the sales motions.
A lot of this is build mode, because of the acquisition, we've now built a team, so we are fully hired and ready to go. We do have support with. So we've got four regional sales directors. We've got two customer success directors that are coming on board. We've got a half of an FTE from a solution perspective to bring that expertise, and then there's leadership involved in that group as well. So these are all things SafePointe right now. We have determined that given that the market is potential, we could go sort of shotgun approach with respect to hitting anybody and everybody who could utilize our product, or we could be very, very strategic and target specific markets where the need is great and the opportunity is there as well.
So these are the verticals that we are honing in on and focusing on. There it doesn't mean that we're not gonna potentially sell into a different space, but that's gonna be more opportunistic as opposed to an overall huge strategy to tackle that market. I was talking earlier, the unfortunate reality is, healthcare industry is one of the most dangerous industries to work in, which seems a little counterintuitive, but violence in healthcare space, in hospitals, is very, very high, and so we're in a unique position to really help that. There's also the need at a hospital to have the right environment, and so we provide a perfect balance of being able to create the security posture, but also an inviting element.
It's a stressful situation usually when you're going to a hospital, so the idea of walking through a metal detector is not phenomenal. The other piece that's unique about the healthcare space that I'll just point out is, when you're coming into an emergency room, that's generally where you see elements of weapons coming into the hospital, less so on the maternity ward, more on ER. You can't put a metal detector in an ER because you've got gurneys coming in, and they won't fit, and you've got wheelchairs coming in, and they physically cannot get through a metal detector. That's why our diameter makes it ideal for that situation. So we're looking at those unique elements.
We're working with the marketing team to make sure that we have materials that are honed in and very specific, vertical by vertical, so that we can talk to the specific problems that those industries are facing, that obviously, emergency room and gurneys are not an issue in the gaming community. But the gaming community has a very different issue that they're trying to balance with respect to gaming operations and the hospital or the hotel operations that are generally both on-site together in those situations. Brand is obviously a huge thing with respect to gaming that they're working to manage through, and so that's an element of the problems that we're honing in on with respect to our clients. Some of the things just notable is we are moving fast and furiously.
So, so far this year, we've built $2 million in pipeline, and keep in mind, that was January, February. We hired our two out of our four sales folks at the end of January, so they were kind of getting up to speed. So we are moving very, very quickly. We're still analyzing a lot of the data. For me, because I like numbers, I always wanna know, okay, do I need 4x pipeline? Do I need 7x? What does that look like? And we're seeing. Historically, in my past, the rule of thumb has always been: you need 4x, you need 4x. We're seeing actually in the SafePointe market that that looks to be lower than that for us, which is really encouraging, which means our messaging is right, our targeted markets are right, and, and how we're going after this is working for us.
So I'm excited about that. So the personas and the messaging, the beautiful thing, and I think, I think Greg also mentioned this, is that so many people from law enforcement transfer into the private sector. So we're coming in as a new product in the space, but with the brand recognition because they're aware of who SoundThinking and ShotSpotter is, and that's really, really helping. Many of your chief security officers or your risk, your risk directors, or VPs of risk management came from law enforcement, came from a military background, so they're familiar with the notion of what it is that, that SoundThinking brings to the table, and that has opened up significant doors for us. You know, I wanted to focus in on some of the messaging that we're, we're looking at in the value proposition. And so the.
What's nice about SafePointe is we're really honing in on the proactive elements of this. So this is sort of the left of the bang, bang versus right of the bang piece, and bringing that to the table, which is needed in the commercial space, and which is the responsibility of the people that we're talking to, is making sure that they're preventing things, being proactive, to make sure that they're avoiding all of that in their operations. And so there's a lot that we're discussing around that. In addition to the aesthetics element, I mean, it, I don't think it's a surprise or a secret to anyone, a metal detector is not pretty. It messes up the facilities look, the architecture, all of those components. And so, so I think we bring the perfect package, and that's really how we're messaging this with respect to our clients.
We're also honing in on our cadence and how we're going to market. So it is a multimedia approach. We're leveraging social media. We're leveraging email prospecting campaigns. We're leveraging webinars from a thought leadership perspective, trade shows, all of those components, and building out marketing campaigns that the marketing team is working on, but also the sales team is working on. I am a huge proponent that pipeline cannot come entirely from marketing demand gen and sales development demand gen. The sales folks have to be prospecting as well, and so we're building all of that, and then the metrics to track all of those things. The initial observations of what we've seen, again, the brand awareness piece is pretty high.
This is, we're at the early stage in this industry, and I respect the fact that metal detectors have been around for a very, very long time in airports and in prisons and things like that. But this is an element that, unfortunately, corporate America is now having to face because of the incidents of violence on campus or in different facilities, that ten years ago even, was not nearly as prolific. It is now, and so we're at a good time to be coming into the market. We also have a truly differentiated product, and we can be an and. There are situations where we've come in with clients and they may need, they may need more of a visual deterrent or want that from a strategic perspective in one location of their facility, but then in others. So I'll use casinos as an example.
There are a lot of casinos that also have concert venues on property. They may want to have metal detectors there so that people know, as a visual deterrent, that they're going to be searched going into the concert. They're not gonna wanna put that in their hotel, where they're charging $500 to $600 a night for a room. It's a very different strategy and need, and so we can be a holistic solution for them, but we can also be an "and" solution for our clients, and that, we're seeing, is definitely resonating out in the marketplace. So the last component is the renewals piece, and my team is also responsible for renewals. I say that a little bit lightly because I cannot do this alone.
I'm definitely working in tandem with Larry and Larry's team on that to make sure that we are providing the right value and the right continual service so that our customers can continue to evolve. That starts at the beginning. When I think about renewals, I'm thinking about it from pre-sales perspective. You gotta get the right customer, and not everyone's gonna be the right customer, so we went through that earlier. We're looking at this from a qualification perspective. Once we get it qualified, we go through the sales process.
Setting expectations is critical, so we're really honing in on that from a sales education process to make sure that our sales team is setting proper expectations as to what results to expect, but also what's gonna be needed on the customer side of the house to make sure that they can be successful with our tools. It's not a blender, where you just plug it in and go. There is an element of strategy and direction and process that they need to put in place. Then it goes into implementation, and that's where the handoff comes with Mark's team to make sure that the implementation team is aware of the expectations that were set, so they can carry that forward and make sure that we achieve the goals and objectives that were set forth from the beginning.
From that, then it's the ongoing support and making sure that Larry's team is dialed in and engaged and understands, again, the results. What does good look like? What is the customer expecting to get out of the system? So they can take that and run with it. And then lastly, bringing it back around with my team from an overall education perspective. One of the things that we have done organizationally is we put together a renewal task force program, and this is cross-functional, so it includes our technical implementations, customer support, it includes the marketing team, and it also includes customer success and sales. We go through our customer base at the beginning of every year, and then we look at it quarterly to identify at-risk clients. And at-risk clients could be, we've heard grumblings.
At-risk clients could be, we've seen that they're not using the system. We've seen that they're not leveraging some of the best practices. There's all different kinds of assessment that goes into that. The sales team assesses it, customer success assesses it, and so does the customer support and provides their opinion of where the customers are. And we really hone in on those clients to make sure that we treat them with kid gloves, that we reengage and get them utilizing the system in the best form before it comes time to renewal. If you try to do that at renewal, you're done. It's way too late at that point. Just to make sure that they're still getting the value that they expected and that they're paying for. That's all I have. Any questions, or should I hand it off to Larry?
Thank you, Erin.
Can I just ask one?
Sure.
Can you walk us through, like, the go-to-market, like, process? Like, obviously, you have different sales and obviously ShotSpotter from Cash Cow. You have the international market goal, SafePointe seems like a separate team, right?
Yes.
Do you land predominantly with ShotSpotter, and you try to expand with other?
No. No. So, from a sales motion perspective, do we land initially with ShotSpotter and then try to go to the other products? And I immediately said no. So the answer to that is, it depends on the customer. So pre-sales, we have to do a tremendous amount of research to understand what's going on with a specific customer based upon what's going on in the news, based upon information that we know from neighboring jurisdictions or from just initial discovery. So we go in with the SafetySmart Platform, and we go in talking about the problems that we are capable of solving and try to hone in on what makes the most sense. Is it that your real issue happens to be gun violence in a particular area?
Or is it that your investigation team is handicapped right now because they don't have the ability to gather the data that we need to investigate crimes? So depending upon the answers, we're gonna pivot in each direction. And that is one of the things that we're doing from an evolution perspective of the sales team, is we're creating subject matter experts in all the products, as opposed to, "I'm a ShotSpotter expert, I'm a CrimeTracer expert," because I wanna make sure that we're able to support the customer based upon the strategies they've got.
Because what we're seeing is, like, obviously, we are seeing as a huge driver. They use ShotSpotter first, CaseBuilder with the public correction, they're trying to expand public justice, right? But obviously, we led the ShotSpotter, SoundThinking led with ShotSpotter first.
Yes, chronologically.
Have you, in other tier three, tier two, or whatevers, right, have you led with other products besides ShotSpotter? Like, can you, you know, discuss, like?
Yeah, so we definitely have. There's such
What's the percentage between landing with other products, not leading with ShotSpotter?
So I don't, I don't know the exact percentage. I don't wanna misstate. Part of it, I would tell you that probably from a customer base perspective, right now, it's heavy ShotSpotter because that's where the company started from. So that is changing, and the dynamics are changing now. From a new business perspective, we are trying to balance the portfolio so that ShotSpotter is, and I'm making this number up right now, but ShotSpotter is 30% of the business instead of 70% of the business or what have you.
And, and that's really because the value, it's you can sell the products as individuals, or you can sell it as a platform, and we're really seeing that the problems that we're addressing with respect to the other solutions are definitely evident and providing appeal out in the market space. It's different people, though, as well. We're talking to different personas and different buyers based upon those solutions, so that also has something to do with how we're getting in there.
One second, like, in terms of tier one, tier two, tier three, four, city, right? In your pipeline, what do you find most promising now? Like, what do you focus your attention most on, tier one, tier two, four, what do you do?
So I have a dedicated team focusing on tier four or five customers because I don't want them to get ignored, and there is tremendous value, and, and there's a huge number of them, frankly, at this point in time. So they're focused exclusively on the tier four, five section of the market. And then I, I would love to tell you we're focusing all on tier zero customers, but there's not as many of those. So we are going into tier three, tier two, with the regional sales directors honing in on those, and then working in tandem with our small, medium jurisdiction sales team as well. So they partner so that it's, it's sort of like a, "Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go for Detroit. You hit all the cities around that.
Last question, Erin, is, like, out of all the opportunities right now, which you find more bullish, like, in terms of like?
The products or the specific.
The pipeline or your field, your market field, right? Which is the most bullish out of, you know, everything.
Right now, I think.
Your, your.
Yeah, so what am I most bullish about from a company perspective, building pipeline? I will tell you, I've been tremendously impressed by the growth in SafePointe pipeline at this point in time. We're also seeing a ton of activity on the international side of the house, and people coming to us versus us always going out to them because of what's happening in Uruguay and because of the press that's happening. So those, I guess I would say, I'm the most bullish about. Selfishly, you know, I have to be bullish about all of them and figure out strategies for all of them, but I'm seeing some fantastic numbers. I'll come to you, but I'm gonna go over here first.
Thanks. So I wanted to just ask about, you know, you have kind of these, this five platforms within, you know, SafetySmart, and there's been a lot of change, you know, via acquisitions over the last few years. The product names have changed. As you are going in to pitch, do you feel like, you know, the clients and the customers understand which products are which? And how much time are you spending on educating them of just, you know, what CrimeTracer is, you know, or CaseBuilder, any of these platforms that have changed names over the last couple of years, that may have had, you know, some legacy success? And at this point, are you feeling very confident and comfortable that this is what we're moving forward with, this is kind of our five-product platform?
So, I would ask maybe Sam to also comment on this, only because I've been here six months, so I didn't know the old products. So for me, it's really easy. However, the thing that I do like about the product names now is CrimeTracer traces evidence through the system. CaseBuilder enables you to build a case, whether that's a case management system or not. So I like the names that we've come up with. I can tell you that my team will reference COPLINK and will reference Leeds, or, you know, we'll talk about some of the other names that have been legacy names. It has not been a tough transition. People get that. People understand that. We had to do the same thing with the company name, going from ShotSpotter to SoundThinking, and it's resonating.
There was IACP was last October, November? I think November. And, you know, that was sort of my entrance into the organization, and I will tell you that I did hear some of the salespeople say, "Well, we're SoundThinking." "Well, you know, it's, it's the, the parent of ShotSpotter." So we're not saying we are Sh- we're ShotSpotter still, but it's honing in on that parent element, and it is- it's definitely, traction's occurring. So it, it's an education element. It'll take a little bit of time, but we're getting there. We're definitely getting there. Sam, I don't know if, because you've been here so much longer-
We've done research on this, you know, with our current customers. There's an initial shock for using the product and the main changes in this providing, and then it goes away. It doesn't matter because the functionality and the benefits are still there. I think it's a positive certainly for new customers, there's a cohesiveness of sort of the way we brand ourselves that was lacking previously. So I think the management for the new customer, the initial shock is over with the company. Thank you.
You're welcome.
Just a question, given your experience at Everbridge, and, you know, they announced that they're selling themselves since you left. Can you just tell me?
That was why.
But, how difficult or easy is this job compared to what you had there, just in terms of, you know, they're 100% commercial, more or less, you know, that type of thing?
So they are not 100% commercial. They, I managed the public sector team for five years. They started out supporting public sector and then did obviously explode in the commercial space. I think I can say this out loud. Yeah, I can say this. I'm not violating anything. The biggest transition and the biggest change, in all honesty, for me here, was I don't, I don't have to deal with the leadership infighting. There was a tremendous amount of that that occurred, and political maneuvering internally that was exhausting, and we don't have that here. We just don't. We get on a call, and we figure out what's needed and what's done, and we all break, and we run in the same direction. So that is, quite honestly, very refreshing to me.
When I got to Everbridge, I was employee 333. There's about 300 employees here, so it feels comfortable because of the size and scope that we are, and I love taking companies and growing the business in that direction. So I just feel like we're on the brink of jumping the shark, if you will. You guys probably are way too young to understand what jumping the shark means. Hopefully, somebody knows what jumping the shark is.
I know what Everbridge is. But I don't know. I do. On the Everbridge product, like I understand it's like a notification type of.
It's a crisis management platform.
Crisis management. Is there any, like, rip-and-replace strategy you have, or, or is there any products that SoundThinking has that you could replace certain products of Everbridge, or not yet, there's no, there's no overlap?
Yeah, actually, they have a case management system, and we sold that in both the public and the private space, and we have a case management system here with CaseBuilder, and so there's absolutely opportunities to do that.
Okay, thanks.
Okay. I'm gonna hand it off to my friend, Larry Jackson.
Great, Erin. Thank you very much.
We spent two days at kickoff tap dancing up on stage together, so we're used to this.
Yeah, we're used to this handoff. Good morning, everybody, and thanks for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Larry Jackson. I lead the Customer Success and Analytics team. I am very thankful. Oh, I'm gonna hit the slide. Thank you. Oh. Is it laser? Is it, oh, the green one? Gotcha. You probably want to see that slide. So again, pleasure to be here today. Again, Larry Jackson, I lead our customer success and analytics team, and I've been with SoundThinking for eight months, and I'm actually very, very thrilled to be here, to actually be working with a very mission-driven organization that's driven on driving to make our community safer. And as we go through this presentation, my conversation with you, all the work that my group does is anchored on making our customers successful and making our community safer.
As for my background, I've been with SoundThinking for eight months. My background is management consulting. Over 20 years in management consulting with Accenture and IBM Strategy, where I worked with many leading organizations on their digital transformations, as well as integrating and implementing analytics and helping them on their change journey. And quite frankly, this is a digital change, digital transformation for the law enforcement agency. So what I'm gonna talk to you a bit about today is about who we are, our approach, the notion of our customer success directors as trusted advisors, really those key individuals who can have those robust, detailed conversations about not only the industry, but also our solutions.
Talk about how we engage with them on an ongoing basis, get into some of the leading practices and keys to success as we have these conversations with our clients, and lastly, let you know what our clients are saying about us, as an organization and based on the customer success interactions. So customer success analysis team. If you think about us, we are the consultative wraparound services to all of our applications, and Sam, Greg, and Erin did a great job of talking about all of our products, but we support our clients in making sure they get maximum value out of each of those technologies within their organizations. This organization is really broken up into three different groups. One is our customer success directors, and I alluded to them when I just made the initial introduction.
We are so fortunate in our team to have an excellent team of former law enforcement executives that have deep, deep industry experience, law enforcement experience, deep relationships, but are able to have those detailed conversations on best practices, as well as to provide timely and relevant perspectives that help our clients be successful. These are people who are many times their peers, and they trust in their conversations. Number two, we talked about digital technologies. The underlying premise with digital technologies is data, and the key is, how do you use that data? And so, fortunately, the second part of the team is really our data and analytics team, where we work with our clients on the different reporting.
We help them set up and stand up different dashboards, so they can look at not only the results that come from ShotSpotter or other products, but also marrying that with respect to their operational data, so we have a full set of information to help them make actionable decisions going forward, number one, but also, how do they continue to improve on their operations over time based on that data? And lastly, is our trauma response and community engagement team. You know, when you think about reducing crime violence in our communities, it's a multifaceted, very complex solution, matter, and it requires all hands on deck.
So we have a team that's dedicated on working with our different communities, on understanding what their challenges are, but also helping to facilitate the aggregation and the unification of those organizations in tandem with policing agencies to make a difference in the communities. So let me talk a bit about our approach. No surprise here, you'll hear some common themes that have come through in the previous conversations, but really, we follow a consultative approach. At the end of the day, we wanna make sure we understand the priorities, the challenges, the opportunities, and the success measures of our clients. Again, being results-oriented. What are we trying to achieve? We're trying to make our clients successful, trying to make the community safe. And so as a result of that, we wanna make sure that our clients have a seamless customer experience.
So as I walk through this, you'll see that the customer success team partners throughout the customer life cycle, from discovery through implementation and through our ongoing relationship management. Let me talk to you a bit about some of these points here. Again, some of these things are gonna come out, but if you think about the discovery phase, that's where the customer success directors partner very closely with the sales team, making sure that we know who the key stakeholders are, we understand the key challenges that our clients are facing because we are a solution-oriented organization. We don't wanna sell, we wanna sell solutions. We wanna provide effective solutions. Part of that discovery is understanding what their data set is and what they're using now to manage and monitor their agencies, number one. Number two, where do they wanna go?
What are they trying to achieve in that to-be state, so that we can make sure that we understand where we fit in with our technologies in that solution, as well as understanding how they wanna manage it, how they intend to manage and monitor success. You can't fix what you can't measure. Next, we help to partner in the implementation phase now with our implementation team. We have the solution coming in. We have our project managers. So we wanna make sure that we understand all the options available to them, but also make sure that we have the right requirements and that we're implementing effectively.
Clearly, when we start to then onboard, we wanna make sure that the project plan is working to success, but also start to have the conversations in terms of key process success measures, so we can then integrate that into their operating processes. And then finally, training. When we talk about making this transition, this journey, you gotta make sure the people come along, because the technology, as we know, is only as effective as those who use it and how they use it. So we have to make sure that we train people adequately throughout the journey so they're leveraging our technologies, whether it's ShotSpotter and the data coming in, or any of the other SafetySmart Platform items within that continuum.
And then lastly, as we implement a product or a solution for our clients, it's really making sure we have regular communications and contact with them. We do regular wellness checks, if you will, as well as our annual review. We'll get into that later. But this is where I think we, as customer success, are kind of the focal point in the relationship. Again, we have conversations, we understand what their pain points are, not only with the product that they're working on now, we can then have conversations with customer support. We can get that information to them to help address any issues they may be having. If we find out throughout their process and their continuum, they have other challenges, other needs, there may be a cross-sell opportunity. We then engage and bring in our sales partners.
As clients are working with our technologies, if they see other features or capabilities that might help them be more effective, there's an opportunity now to get that to Sam's team on different things we can put on the roadmap. And finally, as we have all of our conversations, we wanna make sure we understand the success stories, so that we can bring those success stories to Greg and help reinforce the positive work that we're doing with our clients in the community. Let me just talk a bit about this whole notion of parallel paths to success. You know, as I've, as I kicked off and talked about the different components of the customer success and analytics group, with our wraparound services, we wanna make sure we look at this, the solutions in our communities holistically.
While we typically focus in on our policing agencies and making sure that we follow best practices for each of their processes, the important part is this this process within our communities with gun violence is very, very complex, as I've said before. So therefore, we want to, or we, we do work with our communities in a parallel path to make sure we understand what the community's needs are. Number one, who are the key players or organizations within those respective communities? How do we engage and educate them on not only what our technology does, is, but how in partnership with the police, they can make a difference as well? So as we go through that whole process, we make sure we have alignment, we get them engaged, and we mobilize, again, in partnership with the solutions we have with our policing agencies.
I think why this is important, again, I think someone asked earlier, and I'm not sure who asked this question about Chicago specifically, and this is one of the things we are, as part of our multi-workstream efforts for Chicago, is one of the keys, right? We're working with CPD, clearly in terms of their data, clearly in terms of their processes. We're engaged with City Council to make sure that we continue to have conversations with them and drive the support. But we're also engaged at the community level to make sure we're partnering with the right organizations to bring that holistic solution to the city of Chicago, so they have success. Finally, as you look at this schema here, the one thing that I wanna anchor on again is the data. It's the information that helps us have these robust conversations.
While I'm talking about the notion of customer, excuse me, community engagement, data is extremely important, because we can slice and dice our data so many different ways. One of the things that helps us engage in those conversations is we can look at gunshot incidents relative to schools, relative to parks, different community organizations, and different community areas, so we can show what the overall impact is to that community. Again, it's a holistic view, a holistic approach, focused on keeping our community safe. Let me transition here real quickly and talk about SafePointe. I think everybody here is aware that SafePointe is a relatively new acquisition for us. We're in the early stages of really developing our overall approach, best practices around this, around this notion.
However, I will say that we've already started to engage, not only based on the methodology I showed you before, engage with our new clients coming on, to address each of these type of questions that you see before you. Really understanding what their expectations, what do they wanna achieve with this safety solution in their overall facility? What are their expectations? What's their risk profile? Do they have policies? Do they have operational procedures, and how do we integrate SafePointe into those so they have success? So we're working on that now with respect to our new clients, and with our existing clients, we're going through the same activities now, so we can make sure that they're getting the results they want.
And quite frankly, as Erin said earlier, if someone is having challenges in a certain area, and we find maybe it's a lane is not performing to the degree it is, it may not be the right solution for that, we can step back, and we can make adjustments. But it's about having the robust conversations about what they're trying to achieve, what's working for them, and making sure they're successful at the end of the day.
The last thing I'll say about this is that with the growth that we have in the pipeline that Erin talked about from a SafePointe perspective, we have a couple of customer success directors, CSDs, that we are working on to bring into our organization, so we do have the level of expertise and facility safety protocol expertise to support us in those ongoing conversations with our clients. So it comes as no surprise that this notion of CSDs, or customer success directors, or trusted advisors, is a key to our success. It's the key to our having deep relationships because we have the skill, the knowledge, and we can have those rich and deep conversations.
So our impact, quite frankly, that you'll see reflected in our net promoter scores and our low attrition rate, is because we have that expertise, we have the relationships, and we can have the detailed conversations that help make our clients successful at the end of the day, and that's what we, we strive for each and every day. So let me share with you our team, and I, I am fortunate to have a very skilled and dynamic team, and as you can see here, very diverse team. We're really broken up into three or four key areas. Number one, we have our SafetySmart team, so those CSDs who work with our clients, policing agencies, on each of the different platforms we have, and, and can help drive success for those. Next, we have community engagement. We talked about that team. It's a small team.
We're looking to expand in the future, but a very, very influential and important team to get the message across in our communities. I mentioned the fact that we have two, and you see the silhouettes there. We have two folks that are gonna join shortly here with respect to SafePointe, but that's gonna be absolutely critical, so we have the same level of engagement that we have with the SafetySmart Platform on SafePointe. And then finally, our analytics team, which are absolutely instrumental in helping to develop those dashboards, and I would almost say even educate some of our clients on how to effectively use data and analytics to drive different strategies and different behaviors. I was talking to a gentleman a little bit earlier, and he was asking about kind of how does that work?
Because clients are at different levels of the maturity curve with data. So part of it is understanding their process for gathering data. Part of it, the process, is how you aggregate it and tell the story, and then, quite frankly, the last part is how do you actualize that data? How do you interpret it so that you can change the strategy and move forward? But I guess the main point I wanna leave you with is we have tremendous expertise here, and as I say here, over 450 combined years of law enforcement experience that covers not only federal ATF level experience but also local law enforcement experience.
Then, I wouldn't be a consultant if I didn't talk about our capacity in order to deliver services, and so if you think about our, our customer success directors, we really have over 36,000 hours on an annual basis to be able to provide that wraparound service, those wraparound consultative discussions with our clients, again, to make them successful. A couple other points I wanna talk about. I mentioned the fact that we have an ongoing. A ll of our CSDs have a portfolio of clients they work with, so they know them in and out. They're developing relationships at a multitude of levels within the organizations. While we have those conversations on an ongoing basis with our clients to make sure everything is working well, we know what their issues are, we can provide a perspective to help them along their journeys.
One of the anchors, conversations we have is our annual account review, and that's really to give us a solid foundation with which to work with over the remainder part of the year. So I wanted to give you just an example of the type of conversations we have or the key agenda items. So number one, if you think about this year, as we start 2024, we definitely wanna reflect on 2023. You know, what were, what were your successes? What were the lessons learned? What challenges do we still have to address? Again, so we can have a solid platform and a basis for having those conversations going forward. Then, as we look to 2024, the current year, again, what are your objectives? What are your goals?
What should we be targeting and measuring on an ongoing basis to make sure you reach the success that you look to target? We clearly review our metrics, and that's looking at the ShotSpotter number of alerts. We look at the time of day, all that information that helps them give a great snapshot of how they're performing and how ShotSpotter is performing. But also can drill down in terms of where the hotspots are, again, which helps them drive through different strategies that they may wanna undertake in their organization. Review and talk about performance measures. Again, this is critical.
I think Aaron said, "When we sign a deal, we should already be thinking about renewal." I would submit that when we sign a deal, we should always be thinking about the metrics up front because we have to start metrics up front in order to help improve operations over time for the agencies themselves, also how we're performing. And again, you can't improve over time unless you have information that allows you to assess how you're performing, and that's a critical component that we're building in each of our new clients early in the process, part of that discovery on to live that. And then lastly, we talk about best practice. The next slide I'll show you is just kind of a snapshot of the type of best practices we talk through.
But, you know, we take our initial best practices, but we also learn from our other agency partners on what they're doing and what works effectively for them, and we continue to iterate and build on that, so we can share among other agencies to make sure they're successful. The interesting thing about being in this business, as opposed to my last life where I was working with financial services industries and other companies, is policing agencies, they're all in a brotherhood to try to strive for the same goal, which is community safety. So the best practices you may learn from others can easily be shared with other organizations to help each improve in how they operate.
Finally, I'm not gonna go through all of this, but I just wanted to give you a snapshot of the discussions we have as we start to drill down into best practices, and we look at this from the initial dispatch. So when you get a ShotSpotter alert, how do you dispatch? Well, the key to that is successfully having a policy on how your agency, your patrol, is going to operate with respect to ShotSpotter. So we provide templates, but we definitely push to make sure leadership provides their employees, their workforce, a vision, guidance on how to respond and track with ShotSpotter.
Couple of other points under the dispatch, making sure there's coding, making sure there's a way that we can track that ShotSpotter alert through the entire process to make sure we can have the opportunity to gather that information, that data, that it's so crucial for us to understand how they are operating down the road. And then lastly, making sure they prioritize the response, right? So again, this kind of ties into their policies, but how are you going to respond as an agency to the ShotSpotter alert? With respect to responses, responses kind of gets a little bit into response as well as investigation, but clearly, we want the officers to go to the dot, right?
That is a major learning piece for them, to go to the dot, not behind to the actual address, but to the dot, 'cause that's where our technology drives through. And it's amazing, the type of stories we hear for the naysayers who may not really believe it, and they'll actually go into a spot and look down to where their phone said there's a, there should be casings or whatever, and they actually find them, and they can start their investigation. So it's phenomenal. The next piece that we absolutely emphasize each and every time is gather that evidence at the scene, and one of the key areas is getting the casings, getting the shells from the scene, because that has so many implications to the ongoing investigation.
We actually have a team that's not here, but we can provide strategies around how you drive your NIBIN strategies, meaning your national FBI database for ballistics. Get that information. You can log it, you can get feedback on whether that gun has been used in other crimes within your city. That helps you build more data, more information, to help you potentially solve a crime. But if you don't leverage that tool, you don't leverage that best practice, you're leaving evidence on the ground, literally on the ground, without any way to bring it forward. Then we talk about measures again, and there's a couple of measures. We talk about the performance measures for SoundThinking ShotSpotter. What equally is important is getting the measures from our clients.
What are they finding in terms of victims, 911 calls, firearms? Again, so we can get the holistic picture, which is not only reflective of how they're operating, but again, it's so, so important to get that holistic picture because that demonstrates the value of what we do, what we provide to our clients. And oftentimes, that is very important to make sure that we have the right story, the right information, the right data to be able to support that renewal when it comes up before any type of City Council or any type of other public scrutiny. And then lastly, I touched upon this throughout my conversation, but you have to analyze that data, figure out how the information helps you on your ongoing processes, but also, how do we modify and get better along the way?
So before I wrap here with the last piece, I'm very, very proud of the results we have, because this is really what our clients say about us. Number one is ShotSpotter at SoundThinking, number one, but then also about, about our customer success directors. On the left here, and I think it's been seen in a few other slides here, the 64 NPS score, world-class score. We're very proud of that. That's up 8 points from the previous year, and again, is reflective of the type of work we're doing and the type of value our clients are getting from us. The second piece down here that says, "Likely to renew," we had a 63 score. Again, calculated much like the NPS score, which says, those who are, extremely satisfied, very satisfied, and we subtract then our, our detractors, but 63%.
What's notable about that, not only is that a high number in and of itself, but when we work with our NPS partner on this, they said most of the time they only see no more than 20%-30% from a likely to renew. So the fact that we have 63% speaks very loudly to the value our products, our applications have within making our communities safe, but also says how we're delivering on the services, the wraparound services, for them. So lastly, when asked the question from our clients, "What is your experience with customer success directors, and how satisfied are you with them?" Very proud of the numbers. You can see for yourself.
If you look at the two categories, extremely satisfied and very satisfied, we're well over 90% in each of the categories, whether it's help with my utilization and getting benefit from ShotSpotter in itself, their responsiveness, getting i f they have an incident they're working with their clients on, responding quickly. Again, as I mentioned before, I kinda look at the customer success directors as being that customer-facing quarterback that handles all the things on behalf of the client to make sure they have a seamless experience. So to see that type of responsiveness is absolutely critical, 'cause that means we are listening to our customers, number one, but we're getting the answers, getting the responses back to them in a very, very timely manner. And then overall, if you aggregate all that, 94 for overall satisfaction. So I'm extremely proud of what our team's doing.
Hopefully, I've given you a good overview and roadmap of how we operate and intend to operate, so that we can continue, if not improve, upon these type of results. So let me see if you have any questions on customer success and analytics. Yes?
Thanks for the presentation, Larry. Same question I asked, right, Chicago. Obviously, you have o bviously, you have, on-the-ground data points, right, on Chicago? The question is, you know, obviously, this, the mayor's office, obviously, there's a lot of friction there. Sounds like the superintendent, the police superintendent, is more bullish on, you know, a supporter of the product. Then, obviously, you're working through the communities, trying to, you know, drum up support, right?
Yes.
Contract is signed through the summer, because summer months are, you know, more dangerous, and the DNC convention, right? What types of data points are you tracking, and are you presenting, right, to Chicago, right, to better help precision SoundThinking, you know, when, when, when November comes for the renewal?
Excellent, excellent question. So, most of the data points that I showed you here are the data points we are pursuing with the city of Chicago. We actually have a pretty comprehensive plan to work with the city, but to be quite honest, much like you might have heard with the OIG report or looking at previous data, there are gaps in the data. So what we're doing right now is trying to work through CPD. We're trying to work through their analytics organization to get that data. One of the key elements that we need, though, is the buy-in and the direction from the superintendent to give us all the data we want.
However, with the data that we do have, we are preparing ourselves to at least start to tell the story, so we can build that case, because we know we only have about a 6- to 8-month run to be able to aggregate all that information and build a portal not only for, you know, the City Council members, but also for CPD and for others in the larger community.
So, is the friction with the superintendent being not able to offer the data to you in a timely fashion?
So I wouldn't even say. I would.
Sorry.
Maybe phrase it a little bit differently, but I understand your question. In all conversations we've had with the superintendent, he is a very big supporter and believes this is a valuable tool.
Yes.
We literally have had, in the last week, conversations with the analytics team to get the information from them. A lot of the information, not all of it, they have, and they're ready, willing, and able. However, they need that direction from the superintendent to be able to release it. So it's a bit of a friction point, in that they haven't gotten some of the direction from them on that.
But I thought, I thought obviously he was a supporter, ex-police department head. Why wouldn't he, I guess, you know, provide the information?
No insight on that.
No insight.
No insight on that.
If you do get the information, how long does it take for you to process and present it, I guess, back to the superintendent and then to the mayor?
Pretty short order. We already have the tools in place, so it's just loading data into some of our spreadsheets that actually give us the data, so we can give the type of output we'd want to give.
Okay, thanks for that.
Very good. Yes, sir?
Yes, you've done a lot to explain why ShotSpotter has been so successful. But I'm wondering, in the political environment we have, there's probably the greatest amount of people who throw out data and facts than we've ever had. Would you say that is making the job a lot more difficult, or do you think that Chicago is kind of a one-off?
So, it's a little bit of both. Now, let me explain that. Chicago, we've talked. A fter Chicago happened, we reached out to a number of our clients, and our clients, more than 20, 25 of our top clients, and they said: "We understand what Chicago is doing, but that has no real impact on us. We know the value of ShotSpotter in our community, and we're happy, and we're gonna go forward." However, that information's out in the larger landscape, if you will, as well as other oppositions that we have with respect to ShotSpotter. So the key is, and we've had. This is where we triangulate with our marketing team and others, is to take those success stories, take the true facts about ShotSpotter so that we can refute and provide our case against what the negative comments that are provided externally.
So it's a combination, right? So we know some of our clients are not impacted by that, but we still have to be very proactive in telling the truth and turning our narrative around the success and the effectiveness of ShotSpotter. Does that answer your question?
Sure. It's an impossible question.
It's. Huh?
It's an impossible question.
It's a tough question, 'cause. But we're working on all fronts to try to adjust that.
I think if I could maybe just add.
Yeah, yeah, please.
A little bit there, is I think, in our guidance, we factored in some headwind we're expecting to get, not from existing clients, but from new clients. I think the sales cycles are gonna get stretched out a little bit more because we have to be able to answer the questions that are invariably gonna come up about, "Well, what's going on in Chicago?" And we have to explain it to folks that it's really not Chicago, it's really a, mayor.
A mayor.
That has decided to make good on a campaign promise. 'Cause if you talk to anyone else in Chicago, including the superintendent, including the majority of the City Council, including the residents that are protected by ShotSpotter, they're all heavily in favor of it. But unfortunately, the person with the pen is making good on a campaign promise that he promised to a very few, but very loud contingent of folks that are, you know, just not only anti-ShotSpotter, but frankly, they're anti-police as well, and we're just kind of getting wrapped up in that. So the answer is headwind for new logos. I think we're good with our existing clients. We just have a track record and history where they have their own experience.
Exactly.
Yeah, they might have to answer a little bit noise, but I think we're still expecting a very high renewal rate, as we always have had, and we're gonna actually get some expansions, too, because, in fact, I think it was two cities in particular, when we asked them the question about Chicago, and says, "Hey, we're not only good to renew, we're gonna be expanding." I think that was Albuquerque and Pittsburgh. So does that answer your question? Okay. Thank you.
Just one more follow-up on that. Like, if the mayor of Chicago is the headwind, I should say, right? If Nasim is able to get the data points from the superintendent, right, make a good case that- ShotSpotter does deliver value, and it's just stats, it's just numbers, right? We respond to X amount of cases. We help save X amount of lives, right? What's the argument for the mayor of Chicago to say no to the renewal if you're presenting all that evidence that it helps?
Yeah. So I think it's probably not appropriate for us to kind of litigate this issue in terms of like, what's in the mind of Mayor Brandon Johnson. We've had a number of conversations. I just want to say, for the record, I think it's really important. We have a lot of respect for the mayor. He has a very big job in the city of Chicago. Chicago needs him to be successful, but we do have a difference of opinion on the value of ShotSpotter, and we're gonna be making our case as best we can in a very ethical and transparent fashion.
We have until, frankly, the end of November, to be able to help make that case, and we're gonna see, we're gonna see where the chips fall. In a little bit, when I impersonate Alan, I'm gonna show you how we're gonna de-risk for Chicago, so we can just take it out of the discussion be cause it's frankly, creating a lot of unnecessary headwind for us on the capital market side. So we're just gonna kind of take it off the table and kind of show you the worst case scenario without Chicago, and then everything else will be upside.
Yeah, that's what was, you know, the.
Yeah, yeah. Your suggestion was taken.
Thank you.
Any other questions? Yes, sir.
I guess, so following up on, I guess, all those questions, it's probably become more clear, it's probably become more clear that you need the buy-in of, you know, the community, City Councils, mayors, so on and so forth. And so it's clear you've been tracking and talking to, you know, police departments and, you know, your direct clients, but what, if anything, are you tracking, let's say quantitatively, you know, maybe it is an NPS or something of that nature, with, say, the communities or City Councils or mayors to, you know, ensure that you have their buy-in and maybe that you can, to whatever extent possible, move that and improve that over time?
Are you speaking just general, in general?
Signatures or whatever.
Yeah, you know, I don't know if we have necessarily defined yet, though, what those clear measures will be. But clearly, it will be in terms of the number of. It can be in the number of organizations we identify, those that are on board. It could be signatures that we get on our behalf, but we haven't fully fleshed out a dashboard, if you will, to measure that type of impact.
We did in Chicago.
Chicago, I was gonna ask you.
I believe the number was 82% supportive of technology that would help save people's lives.
But that was more of a wider survey that was conducted on public sentiment on ShotSpotter, and it was highly regarded from the citizenry. Any other questions? I guess I turn it over to Ralph.
Thanks, Larry. I appreciate it.
Thank you all very much.
Nice job.
I think I drank your water, too.
You guys don't have to be that close. You don't have to be that close. Great. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much, appreciate that. So again, Alan sends his very best regards. Unfortunately, he couldn't be here, and he really regrets that, although I know he is listening in, so, Alan, you can critique my performance or impersonation of you, presenting the financials. So let me first start with what I think many of you already know, and that's really about our CAC and how we've been extremely efficient as a company in terms of the amount of sales and marketing dollars that we're spending to create a dollar's worth of ACV.
It's consistently been at around $0.50 per ACV dollar, and that's tracked pretty nicely over the years since 2019. It's popped up a little bit. My expectation is that we're not gonna ever see it kind of go north of $1. We like that kind of $0.50 to $0.60 range. We certainly have a lot more work that we're doing as we're driving some of these new solutions that are a little bit less known in the market, where we're prepared to put a little bit more of our talent, treasure, and time in, to kind of go drive dollars. But these unit economics are extremely compelling when you kind of add them up to the other things that we're doing.
The next slide that we wanted to chat a little bit about is to really push back on this narrative that the sky is falling with respect to people leaving the platform. So we went back, and we said: Look, we want to look at the number of cities where we have deployed since the IPO into 2023. So at the IPO, we had about 90 cities using ShotSpotter. We're now up to 166, and of that we only lost 18 cities net. Excuse me, gross. We lost 18 cities in that net growth rate.
Of the 18, four have kind of come back on to the platform, leaving us with net 14 cities lost over basically a seven-year period. So that's about two cities per year, which is really, really, really quite phenomenal. It's even more impressive on the mileage side. So you'll see at the IPO, we had just under 500 mi deployed. We're now over 1,100 mi deployed of ShotSpotter since 2017 and of that, we've only lost a net 15 sq mi, and that's because 78 mi went off of the platform, but when they came back, we brought back 63 mi.
So people that leave the platform, a couple in particular, I won't name the particular agencies, but they've had the experience of what it means to go basically blind and deaf to gunfire alerts, and they feel that pain, and when they come back, they've come back and expanded significantly. So again, a net 14 mi lost of our core ShotSpotter solution since 2017. And that's not a narrative that you'll see in the general press because that's not particularly controversial, but it is a fact. These are just the numbers, what they represent, and it shows a phenomenal record about our ability to get new logos, expand those logos, and kind of keep those logos over a very long period of time.
Our retention, LTV, is extremely strong, and when you combine it to the CAC of spending that $0.50 per dollar of ACV, it creates a very powerful equation. You like to see low CAC, high LTV. We've got very, very high LTV. We've got very low CAC. That's an incredibly powerful combination. This is how it's reflected in our net revenue retention rate, which has been historically well over 100%. It's dipped down a little bit in the past year, 2023. I think 2021 and 2022 were really phenomenal years. We're not gonna expect that kind of net revenue retention rate going forward. There's a couple of things going on here.
I'm gonna call it the law of smaller numbers versus larger numbers, so it's a lot harder to kind of maintain that rate when you get up over, you know, 1,100 sq mi of ShotSpotter revenue. And then we had a couple of major expansions in 2021 and 2022. So that's that kind of same-store sales revenue number, essentially, and it shows that people are expanding, and in certainly 2021 and 2022, we had a couple of very big expansions, and I think that was Detroit, Suffolk County. I think Albuquerque might have been there and been in there as well. Okay, any questions? Great. Okay, so here's where I get to take Chicago off the table.
So what we're tracking here is, we're tracking the ARR kind of going into the year or at exiting the year, excuse me. So exiting 2021, we're about $63.2 million of annual recurring revenue. In 2022, that popped up to $79.7 million, and then, you know, from our earnings call, we ended 2023 going into 2024, at about $95.4 million. So that tracks pretty nicely. I think if you put 2021-2022 and then 2022-2023, we're showing that we're kind of putting up about $16 million of net ARR revenue add each year.
We want to de-risk the whole Chicago equation by basically saying: Hey, we're estimating that going into 2025 or exiting 2024, we're gonna be at about $100 million of annual recurring revenue. Okay? So how do we get there? We get there y ou start with the 95.4. We're gonna take out $8.2 million of ARR for Chicago. That's the ARR rate that they had back in 2023. We're also factoring in losing $2.6 million of Puerto Rico, and then just other attrition that we would expect, general course of business, about $1 million of attrition, annual recurring revenue attrition happening across all of our other solutions. Then we're adding back in about 120 mi of go live for ShotSpotter.
Last year it was north of 150. We're not expecting to do that well, this year again, but we have some other things that are coming online that are pretty exciting. You know, $5 million of ARR for SafePointe, $1 million for CaseBuilder, $1 million for international, $1 million, combined with CrimeTracer and some additional New York City Department of Corrections annual recurring revenue. We're gonna be able to drive another $400,000, less than $500,000 of price increases, and then we have a very modest, very doable, frankly, $300,000 of ARR for ResourceRouter. So that kind of puts us into kind of entering 2025 with $100 million of revenue, excuse me, of annual recurring revenue. That makes sense? Okay.
So in this scenario, the wheels aren't coming off the train here. We're still growing ARR from $95.4 million to $100 million, assuming, like in an uncharacteristic way, we're losing over $11.5 million of annual recurring revenue.
Why, why is New York DOC higher than five?
Because a lot of DOC is already in the $95.4 million. We're gonna kick in another $500,000 of ARR when we flip it for t he annual recurring revenue of DOC is half of it is kind of I'll call it a subscription fee, and the other half is maintenance. So we're deploying some additional capabilities, so then we can pull the trigger on the maintenance piece. Okay?
$4 million to $5 million?
For ARR? $1.5 million.
For ARR?
So you remember, it's like about two million dollars of annual, It's a six-year deal. There's $6 million of professional services. There's $12 million of subscription services over a six-year period, which averages out about $2 million per year. Okay, let's not confuse that with GAAP revenue. We didn't count that kind of GAAP revenue because it happened late in the year, but we are taking credit for that or a portion of that. We took credit in the 95.4, 'cause we basically turned the system on, that we could begin to recognize the fact that we had a million and a half or so of annual recurring revenue for DOC. Is that d id I get that right, Nasim? Okay. All right. I, I know Alan's probably texting people furiously, if I got that wrong. Yes, sir.
Follow on that. I guess, given the additions from CaseBuilder and the DOC contracts to ARR, I guess, why is the technology portion of ARR essentially flat from 2023 to 2024?
Yeah, because it's essentially a flat business. It's a very sticky business, but it's a very, it's a very flat business.
Okay. But, I guess.
But that's outside of DOC.
Okay.
Technology is kind of the NYPD work that we're doing.
Okay. All right.
Does that answer your question? I wanna make.
I think I.
Because about—it's about, I think when Nasim flashed her deal, it's about $10 million or so. We're being a little bit conservative in her presentation. There's about a $10 million recurring revenue business for technology that is doing, I'll call it, kind of break- fix work, and then some call center work or whatever, taking call taker work. That's about $10 million, and there's about another $4 million of professional services work adding on new applications. So that, that technology business, a hundred percent focus on NYPD, is about a $14 million business. It can flex up a little bit, as Nasim is very entrepreneurial, and then finds other applications to develop, i.e., the district attorney portal for $900K.
Sometimes, NYPD might say, in years past, they might say: "Hey, look, we wanna go build out some additional applications beyond what we've contracted to do." So the professional services piece can flex up and down, but I think generally, we should think about that as being a $10 million to $11 million recurring revenue business with another, call it $4 million to $6 million of professional services in any given year. And that's separate from the professional services work and the subscription revenue that we're generating from New York DOC. Completely different contractual terms. They're funding it differently, et cetera. It's just we should definitely separate, separate teams too, that are doing it, 'cause remember, Nasim has segregated her technology team to do all things NYPD.
So, so just to be clear, the technology, that doesn't include CaseBuilder. Basically, CaseBuilder is on this, in the bottom part.
Yeah, well, so there is some CaseBuilder, 'cause we have some deals that we put in there, and just so it just getting too skinny, we just kind of threw that into the ShotSpotter. We threw that into the ShotSpotter piece.
Okay.
Okay. Yes, sir.
I was just gonna ask, so from, from the list that you have, I'm gonna guess that SafePointe is the greatest variable, I mean, outside of Chicago. But, what was your starting point, and, how did you come up with, with that view, considering it's, it's, it's a new business to you, it's a new business to everybody? I mean.
Well, yeah. So I think, we certainly know what we started with. That's here in the, 2023 number. I think you see that is about $2.6 million of annual recurring revenue. We're adding another $5 million in this build-out of ARR. And do remember, though, that from a quota point of view, we're quoting out about 150 lanes per regional sales director, totaling about 600 lanes at a $20K per lane ASP. That equals $12.5 million of ARR. So we're, for this purposes, we're not, even though the quotas are $12 million, we're saying we're gonna expect $5 million of annual recurring revenue. Again, not to be confused with GAAP revenue contribution.
So just to complete that thought, too, because I'm sure people are doing their models, right? You might take a look at ARR build and says: "Okay, well, what does that mean in terms of GAAP revenue contribution?" And the answer to the question is, it depends. It depends when the ARR hits. Earlier in the year, you get a higher amount converting to GAAP revenue. Later in the year, you get less. For general purposes, one might say, "Okay, you know what? We're assuming that ARR builds up equally over time." So a convenient, you know, kind of hack is doing 50% of ARR would potentially convert to GAAP revenue, unless it's back-end loaded or front-end loaded. Does that make sense?
And one final question on that.
Yes.
Is this replacing anything, or can you give us a sense of how difficult of a sale it is? I mean, does it add.
21% of the annual cost of running the building or, you know, that?
I'm sorry, I don't understand your question. Can you rephrase it?
I'm curious if SafePointe is generally a replacement for something that exists, or is it something new? And I'm thinking, you know, you're selling to real estate, which is going through its own challenges.
Oh, I think I understand your question. I think, let me, can I defer that question to you?
Sure. I would tell you that additive, it's not a replacement. We're seeing that people are building this into their security strategy and their security structure. The areas that we're also focusing in on, real estate isn't as fluctuating right now. You saw that we had Fortune 500 companies up there, and that obviously is impacted. But hospitals, and casinos, and gaming are less susceptible to some of the issues with real estate at this point in time, so we feel very good about those spaces. Higher education's another one of them, and so far, we aren't losing colleges at this point in time due to, you know, people doing this online, stuff like that. And so we are definitely seeing that element is going to be additive to their strategy.
Yes. I mean, it's almost kind of replacing. It's do nothing. It's the people that are doing nothing. But have some pressure to do something with respect to security, they're ripe for us, particularly if they're in the verticals, one of the four verticals that we're focused on. I think it might bear mentioning the Illinois potential legislation that's making its way through.
Right. One of the beautiful things about the great state of Illinois, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite states, is they have put legislation out that mandates that any casino has a weapons detection system in place. So if we can get Nevada to take advantage of that too, I'd be really happy. So clearly, Illinois is a target state for us.
Yes, sir. So I guess you just mentioned the potential upside in SafePointe. If everybody hits their quotas, that'll be much better for you. What other, you know, in the ARR build, where's like other upside for you guys?
Yeah, so let me be very, very precise here. I think hopefully what I said was that that's what the quota was. If your question is, where the upside is, I would say, my view of upside is slightly different than that. So my point of view, the upside is in the Puerto Rico and other attrition. I think that's reasonable. I think there is interesting upside to international and CaseBuilder as well. To me, although we've tried to be very aggressive on setting the quotas with CaseBuilder, I honestly, it's relatively new. We just don't have a lot of experience of how the funnel converts into actual deals yet. I'm excited, I'm hopeful, but I don't have a lot of experience there yet. So I'm not willing to say that has upside.
That might be the right number. It might be upside, that might be the right number. I don't m aybe possibly, it might, it might be less. I don't know. That seemed like a very reasonable number to put out there. I think if we were less than $5 million in ARR, I would be really disappointed, but I wouldn't call it upside. I think our upside is in Puerto Rico and other attrition. So right now, that's $3.5 million. It could be that there's maybe $1.0 million to $1.5 million upside in that. So if we're.
In fact, our colleague that many of you know already, Gary Bunyard, who just couldn't leave the company, he's still working with us, working for Erin, and his sole job is two things: It's Chicago, and it's Puerto Rico, and he's down in Puerto Rico today. So I'm hoping that we can bring Puerto Rico back, 'cause we've done that dance with Puerto Rico before, where they go offline, they experience what the world looks like when ShotSpotter goes dark, and then they figure out a way to motivate themselves to get funding to bring it back online. I'm hopeful that that takes place. I think we talked about the momentum we're seeing with CaseBuilder, and that's why I feel like there's some upside there with CaseBuilder, and we talked a lot about international.
International is very exciting for us, and that could be, you know, that could be $2 million of ARR if we're penetrating another country. I mean, already, we're talking about things going on in Uruguay that are pretty, pretty exciting, that I've approved already. So, pretty exciting. Yeah, great question.
Thanks for the update, Ralph, and I hope you get better online, Alan. This is Yi with Cantor. In terms of, like, the upside, right? The 1,120 on the mileage addition, Ralph you know, last year we, I think we exited over $150 or I think $155.
Yes.
Is there more, I guess, like, obviously, Erin talked about she's going, you know, to target the lower-tier cities, three to four tiers, right?
Yes.
Any upside, any potentials there as well, in terms?
Personally, so we tend to all align as a senior leadership team but make no mistake, we do have our debates about things. So I'll welcome Erin to share a different perspective if she has one on this. But I think it's appropriate to look at $120. Let's just agree that $155 was a phenomenal year. And the nice thing about the $155 that you guys probably didn't know, 'cause we don't report on it quarterly, is that $155 was seriously front-end loaded. What we weren't saying is that we went live with 100 mi in the first half of 2023, which was phenomenal. It really kind of helped us out from a GAAP revenue point of view, and that's a big shout-out and thank you to Mark's team and the project managers that were hustling like crazy to make that happen.
I think when we look forward, the reason 120 seems reasonable to me is that I don't see any large expansion deals on the horizons, and those are the ones that are really easy that you can risk factor significantly. So when you're sitting there with a Suffolk where you've got a deal, they're trying to deploy, you know, over 20 mi or whatever, so I know we've got kind of 15 mi in the bag, then that's kind of what it looked like in 2023. There's a couple of things that are out there publicly. Albuquerque's talked about expanding. Pittsburgh talked about expanding.
But I think when you put it all together, just kind of given a lot of the noise that's going on here, I think it's responsible for us to say $120, 'cause the thing is to say $130 and come in at $120, everybody gets disappointed. If we say $120 and come in at $120, then we're kind of on plan. So it feels to me like $120 is right. We're also doing some transformation work with the sales organization to not have them be completely focused on ShotSpotter. I think, although I don't know, we talked about it here, but I think it's interesting under under your regime.
Like, in the old regime, you could miss all your other numbers, and if you knocked it out of the park with ShotSpotter as a sales director, you could have a pretty good year. I think under Erin's regime, under Erin's regime, you gotta perform across the SafetySmart platform. We're undergoing some transformation work a little bit. So I feel like $120 is a good place to land for ShotSpotter, for ARR. I wouldn't go beyond that. I wouldn't call it upside there.
Thanks for that, Ralph. And on a follow-up on the sales efficiency ratio, as obviously $0.52 is great, was wondering like, you know, like the last two years, it's been $0.40, $0.37, right? You know, it as you scale up, right?
Yes.
You know, how come it's not like going the other way?
Oh, in terms of going north of $0.52 or going back down?
Going back down.
Yeah, so I, I don't think it's gonna go back down. I mean, you, you saw Gregg's presentation and just the robustness that we're adding to the marketing organization. You know, we have a lot more spend there. We're investing appropriately, I feel. We added two new BDRs to exclusively focus on SafePointe. There's that. We're spending more time on content than we had to before, to kind of push back on these false narratives. Also in that marketing budget number is when we had to do a resident sentiment poll.
And this was a, you know, this was a professional pollster doing this work in Chicago. Great results, but what we didn't say that I'll say is the, those things cost a lot of money. I personally don't expect it to go back down. I don't expect it to be approaching a dollar either. I think we're in a pretty good place.
Great.
Yeah, great question. Any other questions? I think everyone should be reminded of our guidance. So we're, we're tracking pretty well to that, and, if there aren't any other questions for me or anyone else. Yes, sir.
I just, the revenue guidance for the year include Chicago or?
Yeah, it does. So just to remind people, for the revenue guidance, it was $104 million to $106 million. Let's take the midpoint at $105 million. We start with $95.4 million of annual recurring revenue, and to that, we add $6 million of professional services that we have good visibility to. It's not annual recurring revenue, but it's very consistent. $4 million of that is coming from the work that Nasim and her team is doing for technology. Another $2 million of professional services associated with the Department of Corrections contract. So that kind of puts us in the kind of $101 million and change for a GAAP revenue point of view.
So we have to get another net, four to five million dollars of revenue, including GAAP revenue attrition. So I showed you previously ARR attrition, that isn't GAAP revenue attrition. And I think if we're thinking, GAAP revenue attrition, Puerto Rico, if we're not able to bring that back, really shows up in all its fullness. So we have approximately, call it $2 million or so to replace from Puerto Rico, maybe $500,000 from the other one, so call it kind of $3.5 million. So you'd have to kind of put up a net GAAP revenue, number of about $8.5 million. So of this, ARR build of, w e have a pretty impressive ARR build, right? So $8.2 million, $5 million of SafePointe, CaseBuilder, et cetera, et cetera.
If we're able to convert this green of ARR into about $5+ million of five to seven million dollars, I think, of GAAP revenue, then we're solidly in our guidance. So very reasonable guidance. Yeah, Arthur, yes.
Yeah, one last question on federal support. Do you have any sense of how much of your revenue is coming from, you know, federal programs that are subsidizing? And, you know, what is expected, you know, timeframe that that would last?
That's a great question. Thank you very much for asking it. So I would say that, obviously, kinda ARPA funds are beginning to w e're seeing the exit stage for ARPA funds. I think we definitely got a bit of a ARPA bump in the past two years. That has been very, very beneficial. What that means for us, our experience is that oftentimes the first implementation of a SoundThinking solution might involve outside budget dollars, but then, when the agency begins to use the technology that they're using begin to show the benefits, they find a way to budget or have resources, financial resources, to continue the relationship. So the answer to your question is, I don't, I don't have the exact number of the ARPA per- the, I'll call it federal funding percent.
There's definitely a boon of those resources. It was very constructive for the past couple years. I don't think that's gonna really have a significant impact on our business, 'cause a couple of things: one is we're seeing local budgets kinda come back in a way, and fire and safety, as a part of the city budget at least, is about 50% of the budget. We know across the board, we have these conversations probably more than anybody, just given our nature and proximity to agencies, is that these agencies are materially down headcount because people are leaving the policing profession in droves, and they're not able to attract new talent coming in there. So you're sitting there, in the case of Chicago, for example, I think they're 2,000 officers down. So what does that mean?
It means, okay, you take 2,000, you could, you know, do their full-time equivalent rate. That's a lot of money that becomes available in that budget. It'll be replaced by some of overtime, 'cause now you have to spend a little bit more overtime, so that'll eat up some of that. But there's money to do things. I don't think I've ever seen in a business money be the sole arbitrator of whether or not they're gonna do a technology solution. So, great! So if there are any other questions, I just, again, wanna thank you all so much for showing up here in person, and for those of you that have endured listening to us online, I wanna thank you as well for investing the time and energy to understand our story and our journey.
It's been a really interesting one. This work is incredibly important to each of us individually. I don't think I've worked at some pretty nice places, too, but the combination of a sense of purpose and mission and doing well by doing good, doing work that matters, it really means a lot to me personally, and I know it means a lot to my colleagues, and I hope it means something to you as well. We can't thank you enough for all of your support as we kinda navigate these really interesting waters during these really interesting times. So thank you guys very much again, and looking forward to seeing you guys in a couple months at our Q1 earnings call. All right? Okay, we're cut. Thank you.