In the past few years I have had opportunities to be involved with a few CRM software companies. For a variety of reasons, none of those have come to fruition. I just never saw anyone who seemed to have enough differentiation to compete with all the established and emerging leaders.
But a few months ago I was introduced to Infusion CRM here in the Phoenix area. I was impressed. Impressed enough to get involved as a consultant and BOD member. They have doubled in size annually the last few years. They have a pretty cool, web based SaaS (Software as a Service) offering. And most of all, they are successfully targeting what I consider to be the last big opportunity in the CRM space - Small Business. The Enterprise opportunity is gone. The Mid-Size opportunity is gone. The only space that no one has really been successful at is the small business space.
You could argue that ACT! dominates this space but I don't think so. ACT! is really not CRM software. It is still a contact manager. There is nothing wrong with that, it just is not CRM. In addition, they are yet to have a credible SaaS offering. Most importantly, the ACT! of today is no longer ACT! as I knew it. The rewrite they did a few years back was, and is still a disaster. About a year ago it was a dark day for me when I personally stopped using ACT! Not because I had found something else. It simply was no longer very usable for me. I found it terribly frustrating.
In my opinion, they abandoned the individual user (previously our main target market) and totally went to groups of users running on a closed network. The rewrite also did massive damage to the entire Add On marketplace that always had existed around the ACT! product. Hundreds of Add On developers found they no longer could do the kinds of things they used to do. In addition, Sage made the decision to certify and sell the Add Ons themselves. This changed what had been a vibrant market.
Truthfully, this strategy has actually worked pretty well for them. They still sell a ton of networked contact managers. But I no longer found the product good for my personal use. It is very slow and awkward compared to how it used to work. Plus, when Jigsaw Health was faced with buying a CRM package, ACT! did not fit the bill at all even though we wanted to use it. In fact, it was then the full realization there simply was not a good CRM solution for small business hit us. Until recently, we simply did not implement any CRM solution. We are now in the process of implementing Infusion CRM. We especially like the cool marketing automation modules in the product.
Salesforce.com has rapidly moved to the enterprise space with a price point and complexity beyond small business. All of Microsoft's CRM offerings are also targeted up market. SalesLogix and others are for mid-market. There just isn't anyone totally committed to serving small business.
If you look at Quickbooks, Intuit has totally dominated the Small Business space for accounting. But no one has done it with real CRM, especially with a web based offering. I believe Infusion CRM has an opportunity to do this. Small business is actually a really tough nut to crack but I am excited to have the opportunity to help them if I can. Should be a lot of fun to be back in the CRM space again.
