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Palo Alto Software Company Overview

At Palo Alto Software, your success is our business. We're the worldwide leaders in business plan software and marketing plan software because we're passionate about helping small businesses and entrepreneurs. The company was founded in 1983 by Tim Berry, a well-known business planning expert and despite our name, we're headquartered in Eugene, Oregon, with international offices in London and Ireland.

Our products

Our mission is to help people succeed in business. All our products are aimed at helping new businesses start up and thrive and existing businesses grow.

Business Plan Pro is our flagship product. For nearly a decade, it has been the business world's most popular business plan software (according to NPD Intelect, formerly PC Data), outselling all of its competitors combined, and it is regularly on Amazon.com's top 10 list of best-selling business software. Business Plan Pro is available for sale on our website and in Staples, Office Depot, and many other retail locations.

Sales and Marketing Pro is one of our newest products. It builds on our popular Marketing Plan Pro (the #1 selling marketing planning software) by giving users the tools they need to find more customers and grow their businesses. Sales and Marketing Pro puts extra emphasis on social media and online marketing, and gives more attention to the sales side of running a small business than other products.

Email Center Pro, which launched in early 2008, is our first Web-based "software as a service" (SaaS) application. It makes it easy for small organizations to manage shared email accounts like info@yourcompany.

Start, Run & Grow Your Business is our "best of breed" software package which offers essential business tools and services to help you start, run and grow your business.

How we support small businesses

With our free websites Bplans.com and Mplans.com, we actively support the small business community by providing a wealth of information and guidance.

Bplans attracts roughly a million visitors per month, offering free business planning articles, financial tools, sample business plans, and other important resources. A companion site for UK visitors is available at Bplans.co.uk. Mplans provides similar content and marketing planning resources.

Members of our leadership team, including company founder Tim Berry and CEO Sabrina Parsons, travel the country speaking about business planning and starting and running small businesses. We work closely with various local, regional, state, and national organizations to provide resources, software, and guidance to budding entrepreneurs.

On July 1, 2009, Palo Alto Software held the Oregon Small Business Boost, giving away $3 million worth of software to any Oregonian who showed up to a giveaway location. Plans are underway for similar events in other states.

We also sponsor a number of academic business plan competitions each year, offering prize money to student entrepreneurs and acting as expert judges to determine winners of some of the most prestigious competitions in the country.

Company history

Palo Alto Software was founded in Palo Alto, California, in 1983 as Infoplan, a sole proprietorship. In 1988 it was incorporated in California as Palo Alto Software. The company relocated to Oregon in 1992.

During the 1980s, the company focused mainly on consulting and market research, with clients including Apple Computer, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Lotus Development Corporation, Ashton-Tate and others. Its forecasts of the personal computer market in Mexico became the standard source in that market until Select S.A. was established in 1988. Founder Tim Berry developed annual business plans for Apple Latin America from 1984 through 1987, during which time sales quadrupled, and for Apple Japan from 1991 to 1993 as sales increased tenfold.

Business Plan Pro, our flagship product, evolved from extensive consulting in business planning for large and small companies. In 1984, Infoplan published a business plan template, which accompanied a book published by Oasis Press, and in 1988, the original version of the software was published as the Business Plan Toolkit.

In 2007, Tim Berry changed his role to focus on blogging and educational activities, handing responsibility for daily responsibilities to a new management team headed by his daughter Sabrina Parsons.