CRM Companies 2009: Jigsaw

Jigsaw not only has a really good product - but they have the “I’m going to seize the initiative” leadership smarts too. The latter first. In June 2008, they announced the Jigsaw Open Data Initiative which gave members of the initiative free access to integrate Jigsaw data, which includes over 10 million business contacts and over a million company records into their applications data stores. Members of the JODI are Landslide, salesforce.com, Maximizer, SugarCRM, Oracle, NetSuite and Sage. Jigsaw also released a Web Open API that could be used to integrate Jigsaw data with other CRM applications, not already partners. This was a brilliant move on Jigsaw’s part. But the question remained then, how is Jigsaw going to make $$$? Well, that was covered too. There are a lot of companies that don’t use the JODI partners nor are they members of the Open Data Initiative themselves. They still pay monthly subscription fees ranging from $25/mo. to a customized fee. The value of 10 million complete business records and the data for 1 million companies is pretty much incalculable. The way they got the data…different. They have a community of 450,000 members and many corporate clients who provide it in return for access to the data for free. That means that I can download my contact file to Jigsaw and get the data I want in return. Which of course, brings up the diciest part of their model. Not only don’t I think I have the right to treat someone else’s information as a commodity, I wouldn’t do it. It makes me uncomfortable to think about that. Does this means of collecting information work? Is it ethical? Apparently enough people think so to give them an astounding amount of data that they can provide for free or sell. That said, they are making some brilliant moves and while I have some doubts about their model’s long term success, I think they are poised to go up in 2009. And I think that their Open Data Initiative is a strategic artwork.