Smibs Could Rival Both LinkedIn & Salesforce.com

Written by Steven Walling / July 7, 2009 6:00 PM / 11 Comments

After being in beta for a year, Smibs has launched their SaaS business software into full production mode. The initial series of applications, with more planned for the future, include a Web-based CRM called Doorbell, and the Smibs Network, a business networking service.

LinkedIn has largely wasted its potential to be anything other than personal promotion, and Salesforce.com CRM focuses almost solely on internal collaboration. While it has a long way to go to truly compete with either, the way that Smibs bridges the gap between public business networking and in-group workflows makes it a serious future contender.

A self-funded startup rivaling both the largest business network and the most popular CRM is a tall claim. But the evidence to back that up is in how its current offering of apps covers the ground of both tools: intimately connecting a social graph with business collaboration.

Doorbell

Doorbell is a SaaS CRM available on a freemium basis. At this point, the simplistic functionality of Doorbell is the weak point of Smibs. While it has a clean, AJAX-y UI, it still lacks much of the specialization and power of Salesforce.com.

The Doorbell feature set is smoother when it comes to basic task management, rather than a focus on contacts and evolving leads. At this point, it's really the bare minimum for enterprise use, and the company is selling primarily to SMBs, creatives, and professional services companies.

You can purchase Doorbell as a standalone CRM, but it really shines in the way it seamlessly integrates with the Smibs Network. Through that integration, it becomes a robust tool for managing the business connections you make and reinforce through the Web.

Smibs Network

The Smibs Network works basically the same as LinkedIn, Xing, or other business-focused social networks. It's set up to be a place to broadcast who you are and what you do, as well as hunt for new contacts. Profiles exist for both organizations and individuals, and you can search either by business name or areas of personal expertise.

What makes Smibs different is that if you find anyone you'd like to bring on to your team, either permanently or temporarily, you can easily give them access to your Doorbell. The single Smibs site allows you to transition from networking to collaboration quickly, bypassing the need to move from one site to the other. The only business network I've seen that comes close to this kind of public-private merge are the Xing Enterprise Groups. The difference there is that the Enterprise Groups create a walled networking garden, rather facilitating CRM work.

Even if your enterprise isn't particularly interested in using Doorbell as your main CRM solution, the ability to work with it in conjunction with the Smibs Network makes it a perfect way to manage recruiting, and customers with access to the beta period for Smibs have already been using it as such.

Really A Potential Rival?

There are some serious hurdles that Smibs faces if it wants to become an essential business tool, especially in comparison to the powerhouses of networking and CRM software today. The leading problem is that business users looking for networking will flock to where people are already, which is LinkedIn first and foremost.

Still, not having to wrestle with separate applications is always a draw for pragmatic enterprises. With the headache that even good CRMs can cause and the annoyance some find in having to manage disparate networks, a platform that blends both might be attractive. It also didn't hurt that Smibs founder Peter Urban has outlined a coherent vision for where the company is headed, with new products in the works for the coming year.

There's a long and difficult road ahead if this startup wants to draw a substantial user base away from its rivals. But from where we're sitting, Smibs has a fighting chance.

Comments

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Thanks for the post. One can tell that you guys took a close look at what we're doing ;-)

One thing I'd like to add is that Doorbell's simplicity is actually part of the concept. We deliberately don't want to overload it with features since this is what makes our competitor's product so hard to use for many small and medium sized businesses. Doorbell can be used by the entire team or your entire company and not just the few specially trained sales experts. This way your entire organization can work together to track opportunities and work you business. Sometimes less is more. This doesn't mean that we're not going to add some more exciting features in the upcoming weeks ;-).

Posted by: Peter Urban | July 7, 2009 9:02 PM

Rivals suggest competitors of equal or comparable stature. A beta offering is not in the same league as a maturing business with well over 20 million users (LinkedIn) or a billion dollar company (Salesforce). How 'bout if you revisit this one when they pass the $100M mark or have 10 million users. Great ideas are a dime a dozen and a better mousetrip does not always win in the market.

Posted by: Ian Gilyeat | July 8, 2009 5:14 AM

thanks

Posted by: dedektif | July 8, 2009 6:35 AM

Wow! Fine with an article about a new offering, but to compare to LinkedIn and SFDC is a bit INSANE. This company will come nowhere close to either of these company's success and will probably market itself to the same simple minds that use highrise and other "simple", "crappy" rip-offs. These solutions fall into the simple and not all that cheap category.

Posted by: Scott McDonald | July 8, 2009 11:35 AM

@Peter Urban:

I like your "less is more" and integrated approach to this sector. I reckon this is founded in your understanding that Smibs can't be all things to all people and that you have identified and picked a fight that you have a decent chance to win.

I do however agree with Steven and RWW that scaling in this model to millions of users is going to be very hard. Classic "chicken & egg" scenario.

One way to scale may be for Smibs to buy, merge or at the very least, partner up with a company like www.ziggs.com - together you can create more value.

www.twitter.com/aainslie

Posted by: Alexander Ainslie @AAinslie | July 8, 2009 11:43 AM

The convergence of social networking & CRM is a logical step. The question is will start-ups like insideview and smibs do it. Or will the more established companies like SFDC & LinkedIn? Probably a little bit of both. The start-ups will exploit an opportunity that others will move into.

Posted by: Martin | July 8, 2009 1:38 PM

What Peter and his team are doing is VERY interesting and reflects what we are working on in the UK.

I am utter convinced that social networks and CRM will merge. We are working on introducing "Social CRM" to our B2B online network, where new contacts will be made through the social network and then grown through the integrated CRM capability.

Other than it making the process of managing your new contacts through CRM seamless, it also solves the challenge that has stopped many a CRM implementation seeing success -- data currency. In essence, with a link between a customer record and their public profile on the site, they maintain their own record.

It's easy to criticise the feature list Doorbell and WeCanDo.BIZ offers, but is there anything more useful in CRM than self-maintained customer records?

I see not suggestions that LinkedIn will offer the same functionality in the short term, although let's not forget that SAP were an investor in LinkedIn's most recent round of funding. I am sure it wouldn't be tough for Salesforce.com to add this functionality either, but they seem to be without a decent social network to attach it to; they've demonstrated basic socnet/CRM integration with Facebook, but are many Salesforce.com users using it for B2C customer management?

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz

Posted by: Ian | July 9, 2009 2:25 AM

What Peter and his team are doing is VERY interesting and reflects what we are working on in the UK.

I am utter convinced that social networks and CRM will merge. We are working on introducing "Social CRM" to our B2B online network, where new contacts will be made through the social network and then grown through the integrated CRM capability.

Other than it making the process of managing your new contacts through CRM seamless, it also solves the challenge that has stopped many a CRM implementation seeing success -- data currency. In essence, with a link between a customer record and their public profile on the site, they maintain their own record.

It's easy to criticise the feature list Doorbell and WeCanDo.BIZ offers, but is there anything more useful in CRM than self-maintained customer records?

I see not suggestions that LinkedIn will offer the same functionality in the short term, although let's not forget that SAP were an investor in LinkedIn's most recent round of funding. I am sure it wouldn't be tough for Salesforce.com to add this functionality either, but they seem to be without a decent social network to attach it to; they've demonstrated basic socnet/CRM integration with Facebook, but are many Salesforce.com users using it for B2C customer management?

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz

Posted by: Ian | July 9, 2009 2:27 AM

What Peter and his team are doing is VERY interesting and reflects what we are working on in the UK.

I am utter convinced that social networks and CRM will merge. We are working on introducing "Social CRM" to our B2B online network, where new contacts will be made through the social network and then grown through the integrated CRM capability.

Other than it making the process of managing your new contacts through CRM seamless, it also solves the challenge that has stopped many a CRM implementation seeing success -- data currency. In essence, with a link between a customer record and their public profile on the site, they maintain their own record.

It's easy to criticise the feature list Doorbell and WeCanDo.BIZ offers, but is there anything more useful in CRM than self-maintained customer records?

I see not suggestions that LinkedIn will offer the same functionality in the short term, although let's not forget that SAP were an investor in LinkedIn's most recent round of funding. I am sure it wouldn't be tough for Salesforce.com to add this functionality either, but they seem to be without a decent social network to attach it to; they've demonstrated basic socnet/CRM integration with Facebook, but are many Salesforce.com users using it for B2C customer management?

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz

Posted by: Ian | July 9, 2009 2:59 AM

@Ian:

I agree that good ideas come cheap and inspiration is only 5% of the value proposition. What doesn't come cheap is the perspiration that goes with relentless and focused execution. That's what works for us and what we keep doing. Finally winning is a broad definition, we are very close to what I consider a win even without millions of users and billions in revenues.

@ Alexander:

You've got it right regarding our philosophy. we are certainly not going after building a HR network with a billion resumes online etc. And the size and growth of our network is not the main attraction - it's more of a side effect - which solves the chicken egg problem for us. Enough said.

@ Martin

Agreed, it will be very interesting how things play out. Exciting times ;-)

@peterurban

Posted by: Peter Urban | July 9, 2009 3:02 AM