CRM Isn't Just For Big Business

The battle to win small and midsize customers over to CRM heated up this week with strategic moves by Bay Street Solutions and Front Range Solutions, formerly known as GoldMine.

Bay Street is an integrator founded last October with aspirations to reach midmarket customers. The company has assembled an offering based on technology from Siebel Systems and IBM and hosting services from Applicast. It focuses on process strategy for redefining customers' internal collaboration policies; architecture design for ensuring the solution will interact with customers' existing hardware or software; and application integration for tying CRM into enterprise software from the likes of SAP, Oracle and J.D. Edwards.

"We're really talking about the ability to design, build and roll out enterprisewide CRM solutions," says Tim Robinson, president and CEO of San Francisco-based Bay Street. Customers can either opt for a hosted solution that taps into the Applicast relationship or host the system themselves.

Despite its relative youth, the average Bay Street consultant has three years of experience with CRM solutions, says Robinson. Its customers include Novell, Support.com, Brio and Acta, which turned to Bay Street for project management and technical delivery. The Acta project will take between two and four months to implement, he says.

FrontRange, which changed its name last month, focuses more on small businesses than midsize clients, but it also is looking toward hosted solutions to help bring CRM capabilities to these companies. FrontRange's lines include the Goldmine sales-force automation application and the Heat customer-service suite.

This week, the company disclosed a deal with Sales.com to link Goldmine to the Internet service portal, which is a spin-off of Siebel. The relationship will enable Goldmine users to synchronize information to the Web site. The integration will be completed by the end of the year, the companies say.

FrontRange's recent decision to buy Maestro Commerce, a provider of hosted e-commerce applications, also demonstrates its shift to add more Web functionality to its product line, says Eric Miles, vice president of marketing and corporate development at the Colorado Springs, Colo.-based company.

The acquisition will enable FrontRange customers to add storefront transaction capabilities. Eventually, information from these online stores will seamlessly integrate with the company's analytical applications, Miles says. "Everything we do is really centered around a customer interaction," he says.

One of FrontRange's top solution providers, Cromwell & Associates, already is looking at ways to become certified to represent the Maestro offering, which was just acquired last month, says Kim Cromwell, principal of the Fremont, Calif.-based integrator. The company generates about $1.5 million in annual revenue and deals primarily with small businesses just getting into technology.

"We have a lot of clients that are just not getting their Web sites up. If we could provide a way for them to do business online, all the better," Cromwell says.

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