CRM Companies 2009: InsideView

This is a company that just figured out how the world of CRM and business knowledge (not BI) intermingle when it comes to traditional competitive intelligence and the social information needed to know the customer. They have this kick-butt product called SalesView in three editions (the basic one is free, the other two are $99.00 per month per user) that draws competitive and profile information from some 20,000 sources ranging from Reuters to Facebook. But it doesn’t just provide that information to you in some unstructured way. For example, it can do what the folks at InsideView call “Connection Analysis” so you can identify who the key influencers are at the companies that you are targeting. So what? Social Network Analysis does that? Yeah, but not from 20,000 places including the oft used Reuters and Hoovers but also Jigsaw, Facebook, LinkedIn and a myriad of other social networks. It then actually does the analysis and provides you with an extensive view of who’s who. Cool, salesguy, huh? But it goes so much further - best target market sales prospects, repeatable alerts for events of interest or importance to you. Oh, it just goes on. Their very bright management team comprised of industry veterans like Rand Schulman, realized that CRM was a natural integration for these extended social services so they partnered not just with the usual - salesforce.com, but with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, SugarCRM, Oracle (in their on demand incarnation, and Landslide (see below for Landslide). They are deeply rooted and involved. Their service is invaluable - and most of all is cool without being there to be cool. They are an incredibly capable provider of intelligence that sales and marketing folks can use - with a business and pricing model that works. What do they need to do better? I’ll let you know. Right now, they need to just keep on keepin’ on.