Sage CRM

@PeterWolf Any thoughts on Contatta coming from Pat Sullivan? On paper it looks like it nails the disconnected pieces of CRM & Email very well. Kind of reminds me of what Goldmine could have become given the way Goldmine uniquely allows people to email each other within a company about a contact and have all that email stay attached to the contact. It also throws in private Socialcast like ability into CRM with the ability to extend outside the organization when needed. http://www.contatta.com/

I found this to be very interesting plus a great interface. The glaring weakness I saw from the website is no accounting integration to any package to even the basic information, such as telling the salesperson ""you customer is past due!"". I do like the look and feel of the application though, now we have to see how it works once it's released.

True, but you'll find most companies don't even integrate Salesforce.com into their accounting systems. We here are very accounting system centric and think its the end of the world for that feature. Interestingly, based on what I see, if the accounting system sends an email to the salesperson that a customer is overdue, with this solution, first the contact info is automatically integrated via the email (if it doesn't already exist), and the overdue situation becomes a task/note. Not perfect, but the email integration makes certain options more viable than traditional CRm. Again, all based on a short snippet video at this point.

First, let's focus on what Contatta is: It's a better email client. I think the idea is great and the interface is slick as hell. If I had one concern it's around their integration to all the social networks. Those networks are always in flux and can restrict permissions via their APIs at any moment. While that's simply the way things are, many customers that use the product might not be so understanding about this. Time will tell. I've asked for an embedded email client within Sage CRM for years and have been told that I'm crazy and that's ""not CRM."" My reply is: who gives a crap about the name if it's valuable and sellable? It's clear that the people directing the features at Contatta actually use contact management and CRM tools and understand the fundamental needs for the average user.

Contatta is definitely not a replacement for a serious SageCRM or Salesforce.com type of implementation with extensive business process mapping, customizations etc. However, IMHO there are alot of people who buy CRM who really needs something that is much better than outlook for interoffice collaboration and light CRM. My personal experience with current 'outlook' integration such as Saleslogix is its very sucky. It 'gets the job done' but is really lacking. I love outlook in terms of speed to manage email, but with what Microsoft charges for maintenance/subscriptions, they have added almost nothing to this program since 2003 beyond keeping re skinning it and re-arrange stupid ribbon bars. I can't believe after all these years they don't offer options for advanced users to properly separate contacts from companies, and to use it as a light CRM system. Long ago they attempted with a plugin (I think it was called Microsoft Contact Manager or something), but it was single user. They needed to holistically improve the exchange server and Outlook if they wanted to make this better. Personally I felt MSCRM was a dumb design and they should instead have built something called 'Outlook Professional'. This way casual uses could still use outlook as is, but Outlook Professional with Exchange could be a true web/smartclient CRM with world class synchronization and massive install base and ease of use due to familiarity. They should have left serious CRM to Saleslogix, Salesforce etc. They would have made more money have 30 million outlook professional users than 100,000 MSCRM users. Outlook should have engines to try and suggest turning inbound signatures into contacts, much better social stuff than lame plugins and info that uses up half your screens. Microsoft still keeps building islands with crap like sharepoint. Contatta to me is what Microsoft should have done vs. their 'racks of servers' approach of the 'stack' that only a true IT Weeny could appreciate. I know its all about marketing etc, but I'd keep an eye on this one. There is always a better mousetrap and I would not count Pat Sullivan out. He defined the contact manager market and arguably the mid-market CRM industry. This could be a hot investment if there is a chance to get in early and if it takes off. Also give it time. I'm sure they want to get something simple out the door and start generating money. Then go for round 2 of financing and start building API's and integration options and then they can charge more per month for more premium features. Kudos for them not trying to boil the ocean at once and instead start with a great founding concept. Again, the proof will be in the details.

Oh and also to @PeterWolf about an email client. At one point long ago Saleslogix had an email client. Other CRM systems had email clients. But they almost always pale in comparison to outlook and obviously don't support plug-ins you might rely on so in the end, people didn't want to use them daily. If this email part is even 75% as good as outlook, I think we have a winner

I agree @MarkChinsky - no doubt in my mind on that. If I had the chance to invest in Contatta, I would. I could see them being purchased by Salesforce or Google in five to ten years for a boatload of money. Most people don't need Outlook - they just want to process emails quickly and schedule follow ups and add contacts in easily. Look at GMail vs Outlook. Like you said, Microsoft has had the same damn thing for 10 years. GMail has a lot of cool features and it's 90% more simple than Outlook. I think Contatta will be take that concept and run with it.

I personally use gmail, but much prefer outlook. Especially since they added the in-line reply feature so you don't have to have a million windows opening as you work on emails. Yahoo Mail actually does a better job of emulating a full client than gmail. I just find gmail requires too much mouse use, and I'm just entrenched with how to use folders. Don't get me wrong, if outlook was discontinued, I could get my work done with Gmail, but I think its 'serviceable' but not particularly better. On paper, Gmail is like Palm OS, and Contatta is the Iphone

I would have no problem trying to use Conatta internally. It's slick, our users would like it and I know our marketing people would really like it.

I think Pat puts it very well here: http://blog.contatta.com/the-crm-status-quo-has-to-change/43 Even in our own organization we use Saleslogix. But its a glorified multi-user contact manager. It's got a ton of features that take too long to use (and its better than most).

I have a ton of salespeople contacts that currently use Salesforce and they all hate it because it's ""too much."" It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Good observations all. My main question about Contatta is, ""what segment is it really aimed at?"" It clearly has potential as a contact manager. It is clearly aimed at ACT! and Zoho with that. I'm no expert on ACT!, but I suspect that Zoho's approach has done quite well against ACT!. For small, sales-oriented organizations, it's clearly worth considering. The problem I see is that orgs with money have broader needs, in support, workflow and marketing. I'm skeptical about how much a genuinely slick UI can overcome that hesitation. My thoughts while watching these brief demos eventually went to, ""This is really just a UI play."" I doubt that their technology is patented or terribly proprietary. So, why wouldn't some existing players simply build a similar UI? SalesLogix is about to release v8.1 which replaces the client-installed Intellisync for browser-based email integration not requiring client downloads. Gmail integration is in a supplemental release. As I recall, Ireland has a similar enhancement on its near-term roadmap. I wish Sullivan well, but I'm a bit skeptical about the staying power of a new CRM offering which has a claim to fame only on a UI that is likely to be copied within 18 months.

One other thought. I think we'll be hearing a lot more about CRM offerings that aim to tailor the UI to the needs of the user, reducing the ""it's too much"" reaction.

I find the marketing functionality of most CRM systems can't compete with true marketing automation platforms like hubspot or even point solutions like mailchimp. I'm not seeing this as a UI play. It pretty much looks like LinkedIn and others. It's the fact that its all built to be a holistic system. We've always said wouldn't it be great to integrate Socialcast with SageCRM and then @PeterWolf looked into it and found it would be a sloppy mess. This is sort of like SAP Business one. It juggles many tasks in a fluidly integrated manner with minimal features, versus say Epicor or Dynamics AX which is chock full of functionality but very complex to implement and use. however, outside of accounting, I think most buyers are more interested in speed & ease of use, versus detailed functionality. Especially sales organizations. Could somebody copy this? Sure. Is their play to likely get acquired? Pat admits that in his DEMO blog. Bottom line though, from what I can see, this is a needed solution. The gap from clunky contact management to advanced CRM is too big and interoffice communications and collaboration (along with outside parties) is a holy grail we've all been talking about for a long time.

I think most CRM's, that have alot of features, just have most users, only using the basic features. Ie, instead of setting up opportunities with estimates, and time to close, it just ends up in the notes. Removing the extra fields probably won't make much of a difference. A few years back, one of the salesforce.com guys who went to SAP to help launch Business By Design (bad idea :) ) said, 85% of salesforce.com users did nothing more than contact management.

We agree more than it might look. 1. Contact mgt is a necessary function in CRM. It's essentially merging into email and Soc Media message capture and management. Contatta has an excellent interface to that need. You can't really do any other CRM functions without that 2. It wouldn't be outrageous to say that 85% of CRM usage is contact management. That doesn't really mean that 85% of people only use CM. CM is a necessary route to get at the opportunity and support management. That said, many CRM's, and especially salesforce, force a user to deal with more application overhead than is really necessary. 3. There is a HUGE difference between the way an in-office salesperson and an outside rep uses CRM. As in, ""the outside guy uses is far, far less."" Robust mobile clients, with voice rec, will likely change this. Automatically channeling relevant social data into the contact/account records will also affect this. But the focus of both types of reps is to make sales and to do this in a way that enables forecasting and exception management. So, it can't be just contact management, but the non-CM operations are certainly a minority. 4. It's hard to imagine Contatta reaching a size enabling an IPO. (I am using Zoho as an anchor in this mind experiment.) Sullivan't no idiot (although I'm not convinced he has the skills to get beyond the startup phase.) So you know they must think that acquisition is their investor's likely exit strategy. Who would buy it? One possibility is an outfit like Infor that doesn't really have a decent CRM for its ERP systems, but then you run smack into the problem of whether Contatta actually fit the needs of those customers. Another possibility is an existing CRM, such as salesforce as you mentioned. But this would only happen for the UI, as I don't see complementary tech lurking within Contatta. And that only makes sense if the UI turns out to be really hard to do. Which leads to my key question about Contatta. Is this really a radical offering that buys it several years head start before others can copy enough of it to level the playing field, or is the UI just a creating implementation of existing technology that can be readily copied by a CRM firm that knows what it's doing in state of the art web UI? Right now, I think it's the latter. But it is early.

If Instagram and 9 guys can get over a billion bucks for their business, contatta has acquisition possibilities. You've got a million .com saas companies with no revenue model at all getting rediculous sums of money. IMHO, this product has way more acquisition potential than say Xero, and can be built and financed for far less money. I think somebody like Intuit could buy this and sell it standalone and with QB online and they would easily have a hit on their hands and increase their saas revenue which is worth 10x regular revenue thanks to the saas wall street craze

Interesting points. I don't know that CRM can value like consumer-oriented social media. And I'm struck by the fact that Sage CRM has still not gone public. Zoho is a full small business app environment, not just CRM. Certainly if QB wants to do CRM, this would be a consideration. I still think the key question is whether the UI is sufficiently proprietary and difficult to copy.

When I looked at it, I didn't think the UI was particularly proprietary. Just well executed HTML 5. It was the combination of light CRM, socialcast, light project management, and email that looked intruiging

That was more or less my impression, too. Saleslogix is already well-developed html 5, and Sage CRM is quickly getting there. It will be interesting to follow this all.

Live webinar demo of Contatta coming: http://www.contatta.com/events/2013-nov-contatta-first-look/