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By Michael Eggebrecht
On the heels of a partnership with D&B and the launch of a hosted CRM record management service, Jigsaw, provider of a business contact database, is announcing today that it achieved profitability in the first two quarters of 2009.
San Mateo, Calif.-based Jigsaw's database contains records on 3 million companies and 14 million contacts. While the numbers pale in comparison to those of D&B, which has 140 million global records, Jigsaw's information is valuable because its online community of 900,000 members builds and maintains the database, according to Jigsaw CEO Jim Fowler.
For CIOs, obtaining raw information isn't the problem, says Fowler. "The issue is that they've got these records that sit in their systems and they get stale quickly. They're constantly changing; they die. A record for John Doe at XYZ.com -- he leaves that company and that's a record that pollutes the database."
Jigsaw community members, who tend to be recruiters, small business owners and salespeople at smaller organizations, take care of that problem by continually maintaining the records. In exchange for adding or updating a record, they get access to data they need, and the new records are automatically pushed to Jigsaw's corporate clients.
Jigsaw makes its company records, or business directory, freely available for download. Fowler believes that ultimately the contact records will become commoditized as well. As data becomes increasingly transparent, "the value isn't in just the raw data, but understanding the changes," he says.
Though Jigsaw's competitors include the traditional data providers, Fowler says the company is actually more likely to become partners with those companies than rivals. "We're disrupting the traditional data business," he says, "but we're doing it in a way where we're partnering with them." In late April, D&B announced an alliance with Jigsaw, allowing the business information giant to resell Jigsaw contact data.
"Our customers are asking for solutions to broaden and accelerate their sales and marketing activities -- especially their e-mail campaigns," said D&B chairman and CEO Steve Alesio at the time. "The combination of Jigsaw's contact information with D&B's global business database will provide customers with a one-stop shop for company and contact information."
The recession may actually have been beneficial for Jigsaw, which went live with the database in December 2005 and now has more than 900 enterprise customers. "People in a hard market are more likely to get aggressive about trying new and different things," notes Fowler. Technology businesses, including IBM, Dell, Monster and Lenovo, account for a large portion of Jigsaw's enterprise customers, but "a lot of the Fortune 500 companies use us," he says.
Along with vendors like StrikeIron and TheWebService, privately held Jigsaw is one of a handful of companies that have adopted the data-as-a-service label. About two months ago, it rolled out Jigsaw Data Fusion, a hosted service that Fowler calls a "game changer."
For Data Fusion customers -- 40 have signed on thus far -- Jigsaw gives them complete access to its contact database and stores a copy of their own databases in the cloud, he explains. On a nightly basis, the company performs automated maintenance on the records and updates their CRM system, flagging dead records and adding data that fits the criteria of the client's administrator.
Currently Salesforce.com is the only customer relationship management system integrated with Data Fusion, but Jigsaw says it's in talks with all of the major providers of CRM and marketing automation software providers.
Fowler acknowledges that products like Harte-Hanks' Trillium Software perform some similar tasks, but he notes that they are software offerings, rather than a hosted service, and are more about normalization and standardization than moving data. "The value is in understanding the live data and then automating it completely through systems," he says.
The service costs $99 per month per seat, and clients have to buy one seat for every member of the sales team. Customers that opt to share their data, however, pay $20 less per seat. "I believe that over time, most people will elect to share," says Fowler. "They're going to say, 'I don't really have a competitive advantage anymore. These basic records -- everyone has the same access to them. I might as well get a cheaper price.'"
For Jigsaw, the benefit is obvious. It gets to pipe the changes one customer makes in its CRM application into other clients' systems, once those updates are verified.
Fowler believes that Jigsaw is on the right track with its model, and he has set a rather lofty ultimate goal: "We want to map every business organization on the planet. We want the company contact data for all professionals globally."
For Fowler, Jigsaw, which took in $18 million in three rounds of funding, is a classic Silicon Valley success story. It took venture capital money and built itself up relatively rapidly, doubling its revenue every year. "I was hoping that we would have gotten cash-flow positive earlier than we did, but I was pleased."
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