What does Salesforce.com Acquisition of Jigsaw mean to Sales & Marketing ?

Jeff, I'm not as familiar with Jigsaw these days. It used to be a lot of their data was incorrect. Is there data more up to date now with things like Twitter, Facebook integration? Anyway, interesting to think how to integrate this into SFDC. When you have multiple sources of information for a contact what data wins out?

Also, several people have posted Focus briefs in the community on this topic. I thought people on this thread might be interested. Focus Expert Dana Gardner suggests (http://www.focus.com/briefs/marketing/jigsaw-buy-salesforcecom-shows-lead-gen...) that the SFDC-Jigsaw deal shows that lead gen is the dominant theme for B2B marketers. I have a feeling many of the insiders would have already known this for quite a while. Dana also cries BS on any privacy concerns from the B2B community

Another Focus Expert and Accenture consultant Sean Ryan posted a brief on the SFDC-Jigsaw deal with a focus on DAAS (data as a service) and the cloudy interesection of CRM and the world of social network data. Good stuft - http://www.focus.com/briefs/sales/daas-new-salesforce/

Mike, I believe this is a very strategic acquisition for Salesforce. I think SFDC is really trying to make their CRM product a living/breathing app with the Jigsaw acquisition. What does that mean? It means that Salesforce will start populating the app with records, leads, data, etc... for its customers. That means a few things for sales and marketing professionals:

1. There's a convenience win in so much that there will be tighter integration between the app and the data that populates the app.

2. It will be interesting to see how SFDC regulates data ownership issues. There's no way I want my competitors benefiting from my updates to the app.

3. You will pay more. That's really what this acquisition is about. SFDC can either expand their total available market via new apps (tough) or they can augment the core CRM app with things like data and social features (easier).

As far as marketing automation is concerned, make no mistake about it - as soon as Salesforce believes that this is a revenue opportunity pursuing worth (and one day they will), they will pursue it vigorously either by rolling their own or buying one of the market leaders. And then the feeding frenzy will be on with other CRM vendors like MSFT, Oracle, and SAP joining the party.

I tend to agree with Scott. Marketing automation, much like the many email service providers that Salesforce.com has as partners, has so much competition (and existing value for SFDC customers) that there is no pressing need to acquire there.

On the other hand, the Jigsaw one makes a lot of sense, as it gives SFDC the opportunity to dominate the emerging (Data) DaaS cloud platform.

I just wrote a brief on what this means to B2B marketers, but I think the integration of data over the cloud has dramatic ramifications. Complete a signup form with one field, such as email. Purge dead records. Fix bad data.

Think you'll see a lot more mergers along these lines. Looks like we're getting closer and closer to the world of "24."

Jeff Ogden

Maria, tell Jon to come on over and join the conversation ;-).

My clients struggle with the accuracy and lack of volume (in their target markets) from many list providers. My firm is often retained to verify list information - from newly purchased lists! Until someone gets a grip on accuracy (or LinkedIn provides some options in this area - can you picture it, an opt-in / out option to be included in lists), there will be limits on the value of list integration. Spam Traps will also cause pain as email vendors refuse to send to these lists.

My take is that:
1. This will accelerate the inevitable commoditization of basic contact and company data - http://blog.insideview.com/2010/04/21/salesforce-com-will-help-free-data/
2. For those where a name, email address, phone is all that's required, this should be a big step forward.
For those who need more intelligence (social media profiles, compelling business events, social network connections) this won't obviate the need for relevance filtering, aggregation. It will actually raise the bar - attention is quickly becoming the scarce commodity
3. I think the questions on data accuracy, and the challenges of automatically feeding & cleansing data are important ones.

Gathering business intelligence is not a new thing for sales and marketing savvy people. Tools such as One Source, D&B, Hoovers etc. have been around for years and SFDC has had integration of many of these in Apexchange for a while. So, it was inevitable.

Although there is always a challenge to keep information accurate, it is a great start to understanding your prospect's/customer's challenges and needs to give sales a competitive edge. If you are interested in these types of tools, check out how InsideView has created a tight integration within SFDC.

To answer your questions: It is crucial to improving sales enablement, improving productivity and improving sales win/loss ratio to have a single user interface that is accessible anywhere, anytime AND where this information is up-to-date and accurate. So, if SFDC absorbs all things good, all things good ;)

SFDC has been very smart in adding solutions that add value to their core product and will benefit their target customers. Is there a good fit with IBM, Oracle and the likes???

Jon Miller, VP of Marketing at Marketo, did a great post about this on the Modern B2B Marketing blog driving much of the discussion around this topic. In this he stated that this purchase has the ability to revolutionize the way we generate leads.

You may want to read the entire post, found here: http://blog.marketo.com/blog/2010/04/salesforce-buys-jigsaw-%e2%80%93-what-it...

I'm sure Jon would love to know if you agree or disagree with some of strong comments in the post.