Salesforce Acquisition of Jigsaw Shows Continued Importance of Data in CRM and Beyond

The Salesforce.com acquisition of Jigsaw this week underscores the advantage data can provide an application, making it much more useful and the benefits greater. The $142 million dollar deal (and possibly more depending on performance) marks the first time a CRM company has gotten into the on-demand data business.

Jigsaw provides a database of businesses and key contacts that has been compiled using crowd-sourcing, an approach similar to what Wikipedia employees for its encyclopedic content. Users provide contact data they already have in something like a "contact data exchange" in order to get the contact information they would like to have (and of course have the option to buy it outright for $5/contact).

Clearly Salesforce sees this as both a competitive advantage (no other CRM provider has the ability to provide contact and lead data directly into a company record except via third-party add-ins), and also an increasing revenue opportunity going forward given the expanding market for data-as-a-service.

This data-advantage trend is not limited to SAAS CRM applications. For example, one of the reasons Google voice search (available for the iPhone, Android, and as of earlier this month the Blackberry) performs so well is because it utilizes Google's own historical search data to determine what people are likely to look for when words sound similar or are not entirely clear. For example, it is more likely to defer to the name of a restaurant when there are ambiguous results because of Google's own search history data ("pizza" is more likely than "Pisa", except perhaps in central Italy). This data-driven fault-tolerant voice search method is a powerful use of proprietary data and a capability that other vocal search technology doesn't have. Again, it's data that gives them the edge.

At StrikeIron, we have seen hundreds if not thousands of use cases where multiple types of timely data delivered on demand via our platform has greatly increased the value of e-commerce, marketing, or call center applications.

There are many, many categories of data available for on-demand integration into applications, not just business contact data and search term propensity. So as we move forward, I think we will see more and more the importance of data, especially proprietary data, in Web applications (both business and consumer) because of the advantages it can provide. The trick of course will be how to get it.