Salesforce.com to pay $US142m for cloud-based contact provider, Jigsaw

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 22 April 2010 13:37

IT Industry - Deals

Salesforce.com is to acquire online contact information provider, Jigsaw for $US142m to enable customers of its cloud based CRM services to better find and manage customers' and sales prospects' contact information.

Jigsaw claims to be the world's largest database of up-to-date, downloadable, and complete contact and company information. It boasts a directory of more than 21 million business contacts and says that over 25,000 contacts are added and edited daily by a dedicated user base of over one million.

Salesforce.com says: "The acquisition will combine the power of salesforce.com's suite of CRM applications and enterprise cloud platform with Jigsaw's cloud-based model for the automation of acquiring, completing and cleansing business contact data.

According to Jigsaw, "The quality, content, and scope of Jigsaw's world-class contact directory are unrivalled. Every Jigsaw business contact is complete with a phone number (over 70 percent of which are direct dial), position, company, mailing address, and business email address."

Jigsaw also offers free tools for researching companies as well as a user generated company research wiki pages.

Companies and individuals, whether or not already salesforce.com customers, can become members of the Jigsaw community by sharing common contact data that is found on a business card, including name, title, company, mailing address, business telephone number and e-mail address.

Any Jigsaw.com community member can the access the database, and can accumulate points through helping to maintain data quality. These points may be redeemed for access to additional records.

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