images I was writing before here and here about the Contact Management challenges to overall SFA user adoption. There are some exciting news which could help to deal with this challenge.

Jigsaw, a business information provider that relies on a user-generated content model to keep its database of corporate and individual contact information up to date, today announced plans to offer its corporate data free of charge.

“In essence, we’re open sourcing our corporate data,” said CEO Jim Fowler. “Corporate data is close to becoming a commodity. We’re going to make it a complete commodity.”

Designed as an alternative to companies like Hoovers, Jigsaw offers both corporate data, like headquarters, industry and contact information, and contact data, such as direct phone numbers, email and titles for individuals.

Jigsaw users can pay for the contact information via a subscription service and earn additional points for updating records with up-to-date information.

Dubbed the “Open Data Initiative,” Jigsaw is partnering with leading on-demand CRM vendors to bring its corporate data to their CRM systems. Entellium, Landslide, Maximizer, NetSuite, Oracle, Sage and SugarCRM are all making it possible for customers to download Jigsaw’s data via CSV files into their on-demand applications. Microsoft’s CRM online is not part of the program.

Unfortunately it still seem to require some IT tinkering to facilitate proper import of data and subsequent scheduled update in a context of internal Account Management, but it surely is a big step in a right direction.

… very good adoption experience when it was possible to add (mash) external information about Customers and Contacts automatically fed from on-line subscription services. That could be huge value added for salespeople, who otherwise would need to spend hours researching or fly blind without CRM system.

The “mashing” approach implemented in InsideView, I have written about here, is even more attractive and very well worth considering as an important part of CRM implementation strategy.