Primix: Ensuring Efficiency

Primix president Mike Troiano has no illusions about the stability of the solution-provider industry, even with the benefit of vertical markets. "We're going to find niches in verticals that we can focus on to build a profitable business," he says. "But we acknowledge that every three to six months, those niches are going to change."

It should come as no surprise that Troiano's company has been through its share of changes. The solution provider, based in Watertown, Mass., turned from an Internet software company in 1996 to a Web integrator in late 1998. At first, Primix stumbled, but rebounded in 1999 with its new e-business practices. The company introduced its CRM 360 solution in 2000 and concentrated on e-branding for strategy, technology and creative services. But Primix struggled going into 2001 amid a dwindling field of Web-savvy customers and shortages in IT spending.

It was time for another change, so Primix recently introduced a new back-end CRM solution called Intelligent Customer Response (ICR). The offering, which targets the insurance industry, gives customer-service systems access to claims, sales and other information. Troiano had found his new niche.

"We're approaching customers with a very specific solution to a very specific problem, and now we're starting to close business with this offering," Troiano says.

The Primix team has been working with customers in the financial-services sector ever since the company decided to ditch software for services. One of the company's first projects was developing Kemper Insurance's PointandQuote.com Web site, which offers users insurance information and quotes.

"We took what we learned from Kemper and built a solution that we could take to other customers," says Dan Cunningham, director of CRM solutions at Primix. "We saw a tremendous amount of interest and spending on CRM in the financial-services vertical."

From there, Primix began to cultivate its CRM offering around the pain point of inefficient information exchange with older mainframes and legacy systems. Troiano admits that developing a vertical-specific solution that can also be customized is a long and arduous undertaking. "Frankly, it's been two years of trial-and-error to get down to something that really works," Troiano says. "It's a highly engineered process. One of the biggest challenges is that you end up being a hammer looking for a nail." Primix, it seems, has finally nailed it down.

Part 4: Stonebridge; Cure For The Pain