The Ultimate CRM Mashup just got Better

Picture a world like the one I describe here, where every gas station has the same technology and the same pricing model: you pull up in your car, grab the gas can out of the trunk, walk around behind the station and fill up the can. Walk back to your car and pour the gas in your tank. Repeat as many times as necessary to top off, and pay by the gallon.

Then along comes a competitor with better technology (pumps!) and a better pricing model (a monthly subscription for all the gas you can use).

This analogy is a pretty good one, I think, if you think of information as the fuel of your CRM, and if you’re comparing InsideView to other providers of information about contacts, accounts and leads. Here’s how they stack up along the technology and pricing model dimensions:

Technology

InsideView just released a sweet mashup for Dynamics CRM, that uses an IFRAME so you can embed it, for example, on the Account form. If you’re on an account for which you want better (or some!) information, click the Synch Key Info button, and InsideView checks to see what information they have in their databases that aren’t in yours, and suggests the fields you can import. After you confirm, it automatically brings all the selected data into your CRM, and as soon as you refresh the form it’s all there!

It’s even better for contacts. If you’re on an account for which you want to pull in some more contacts, click the InsideView People tab, and it searches the databases it syndicates (including Hoovers, Jigsaw, and others), and shows you all the information you need to see: name, title, phone number, e-mail address. It amazes me how much information they have, and how good the quality of the data is.  Identify the contact records you want, click Export, and in three clicks per contact, you’ve added a prospect to your CRM.

Pricing Model

The pricing model’s a pretty simple one: $99/month per user. The other vendors I’m familiar with (Hoovers, Jigsaw) all have a per-record model.

So when you combine the all-you-can-eat pricing model with the IFRAME integration and automatic importing of information…I’d have to recommend you go with InsideView.

Here’s a demo I posted on YouTube that shows how you can use InsideView, integrated within Dynamics CRM Online (works as well for on-premise) to import contacts, leads and accounts, and to improve the quality of your own data: