Infusiastic About Small Business e-CRM

You gotta love the enthusiasm—or should I say "infusiasm"—of the folks at Infusion Software. I wrote about Infusion last year when CRM legend Pat Sullivan joined the company's board of directors. I just attended Infusion's annual user conference (March 5-7 in Scottsdale, Arizona), to get an update.

As I noted previously, I think it's great that Infusion is really focused on the "S" in the SMB market. Sullivan's involvement is a plus and last October Infusion raised some serious money with Silicon Valley VC firm Mohr Davidow Ventures leading a $9 million round of funding.

Now the company is ready to really set sail with money to make product enhancements and grow its customer base. Adam Ross jumped ship from NetSuite in January to be Infusion's VP of Business Development, which includes building a partner ecosystem. This is critical to Infusion's growth and success. Selling to small businesses is difficult, you can't afford a "blue suited" sales force. And not everyone will buy online without some local help. So, Infusion is recruiting and certifying consultants.

One challenge, CEO Clate Mask admits, may be keeping these consultants from bringing clients that are too big for Infusion. He's adamant about staying focused on the under 100 employee market, and really feels the sweet spot is under 50. He says they have refused deals with companies outside of their target, and have encouraged (gracefully, I'm sure) companies that grew too big to seek other solutions.

It's rare to see this kind of focus, and I hope Mask and his crew can keep it up. It's far too common for software companies to move upmarket, and eventually the product, pricing and strategy falls apart for the smaller businesses that signed on early.

So, what are they selling? Mask said they've struggled with the term "CRM" because, although it's well-known, it can mean many different things even in the software business. Infusion is shifting to more of an "e-marketing" message, which is a much better fit, in my opinion. There are plenty of good SFA solutions on the market, but Infusion's claim to fame is really Internet marketing; it's more like Eloqua for small businesses, rather than another Salesforce.com wannabe.

Over all, I'd say Infusion offers an "E-CRM" or "E-Business" solution, including e-commerce, with the most emphasis on marketing. Most other SaaS solutions tend to focus on sales or customer service.

I think this statement from their web site makes this point clearly:

Infusion CRM is a web-based software program that centralizes, organizes and automates lead generation, lead conversion, and client fulfillment. Unlike ACT, Goldmine, or even Salesforce.com, Infusion CRM is a comprehensive, active system built specifically for small businesses that recognize marketing and automation are necessary to grow quickly and profitably.

At the conference, some of Infusion's power users shared their success stories and tips for success in a panel discussion. They talked about lead generation, analyzing campaign ROI by lead source, e-commerce store setup and even lifetime customer value (which apparently Infusion can help estimate). It's clear that conventional SFA is not the focus of Infusion or its customers.

There's a lot to like about Infusion, but mostly I like the fact that they are really committed to small business, and have done a nice job of harnessing the power of the Internet in an affordable, integrated solution. In the future, I'd like to see better integration with QuickBooks so that e-commerce transactions can be posted easily. Building more brand awareness and their channel partner program is also critical in the months ahead, if Infusion wants to become a top brand in the small business CRM market.

Infusion seems new, but already has some 5,000 customers acquired over the past four years or so. Now with money to grow and all that great Infusiasm to help small businesses truly leverage the Internet, the company is on a great path. Stay tuned...