Turning the web into the world's largest sales database

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 24 April 2008 11:25

Business IT - Technology

Be careful what you say about yourself on publicly accessible social networking sites: because it will likely be harvested, incorporated into a customer management system and used to try and sell you something.

Kapow Technologies, which claims to be "expert in harvesting mashable public and private web intelligence with software that turns the Web into the world's largest database," is partnering with Wavemaker, a provider of open source tools for rapid Web application development, to demonstrate a  "Social CRM" mashup application at a Web 2.0 Expo being held at San Francisco's Moscone Center.

According to Kapow the mashup, dubbed 'Sales Social',  "enables sales professionals and other service providers to more easily locate information about prospects and customers through the integration of several popular CRM and social media sites including SalesForce, LinkedIn and Technorati.

Stefan Andreasen, founder and CTO of Kapow claims that CRM users today are  tapping half a dozen other Web resources to populate their prospect databases and Sales Social makes this process much more efficient. "It drastically reduces one's need to leave a CRM application to gather the required information. Thanks to rapidly deployed AJAX applications and mashup robots, companies can create powerful Social CRM applications in a day or two," he claims.

And Kapow's  technology has some high profile users. The company says that its Kapow Mashup Server has attracted more than 300 clients including AT&T, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, CSFB, Intel, Vodafone, Audi and  DHL and SimplyHired and partners such as BEA Systems, IBM and Oracle.