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WorkForce Software Inc. of Livonia plans to use an investment of $5.5 million in venture capital to ramp up the sales and marketing staff for its payroll-management software.
It predicts that increased sales will boost revenue from $10 million last year to $17 million in 2009.
Orix Venture Finance, the venture-capital arm of Dallas-based Orix USA Corp., an investment-banking firm with $4 billion in assets, announced in January that it had made the $5.5 million investment.
"WorkForce had developed a very strong technology that enables them to land very big customers, but the company has been understaffed as far as its directmarketing and its sales force," said Ray Boone, an Orix Venture principal. "We'll be able to help them there."
WorkForce was founded in 1999 by CEO Kevin Choksi; Mike Knister, the chief technology officer; and Kathy Cannon, the implementation director. It provides software to manage payroll processes and oversee compliance with state and federal regulations and with union rules.
In 2006, WorkForce began offering a hosted online version. "That's going to be the big growth area for us," said Choksi.
Choksi said the company was funded at its inception by personal assets, including home-equity loans. "We went many...