During my interview with him, Clint Wilson, founder of Cazoomi, he kept referring to “members” in his company´s network. I was intrigued: I knew Cazoomi to be a company that provided software implementation and connectors for SaaS applications to small businesses. “Each of our consultant, who work on implementation and integrating applications, has to be on the Cazoomi TrustCentral℠ LinkedIn network,” Cazoomi explained . “This helps us highlight them to our customers and partners.” Their customer base, by the way, is growing fast. At last count, the company already had 230 customers.
That’s not too bad for a company launched less than two years ago.
Clint and his team started Cazoomi in 2009 after realizing that “we had a cool application that allowed companies to integrate various SaaS applications such as NetSuite.” The idea, he says, was to meet the small business band of customers. That Clint and his team have years experience working on implementations, integrations and support helped. GetSatisfaction was their first partner; since then, the company has racked up a 100 percent growth curve each month.
Cazoomi states that SaaS connectors free up small businesses from the upsell process. “Essentially, SaaS connectors take people like me i.e., sales engineers out of the equation and empower small businesses,” he says. “We want to get you up and running as soon as possible without the hassle of dealing with consultants.”
This is because SaaS connectors like Cazoomi integrate visual work flows into their system that enable small businesses to transfer data seamlessly from their on-premise application to cloud-based applications. This can be especially helpful when you are transitioning data between on-premise and cloud-based data intensive applications such as customer relationship management or help desk applications.
Clint says that experience has taught him that people prefer paying set fees each month (as opposed to a full lump sum) for an application. This, he says, made him focus on small businesses. “The future lies in small businesses,” he says. “And, for most of them, choice of an application is a SaaS specific solution set coupled with a money pick.”
So, Cazoomi has three plans for using connectors: Basic, Professional, and Enterprise. Each uses a different number of sync profiles (or the type of application being used). Over the years, Cazoomi has created 58 different profiles. According to Clint, the type of application is also used as the main differentiator between the plans. So, the Basic Plan includes integration and support for inexpensive and SaaS-based CRM applications such as Zoho CRM. “Then, it (the Professional Plan) goes up to the next level,” he explains. In this case, he is referring to relatively more expensive applications such as Microsoft Dynamic CRM and help-desk applications such as Zendesk. “We are the only company that provides integration with Zendesk to NetSuite in a simple, easy to understand way for small business,” he says. Once the customer has opted for a plan, consultants help them integrate and transfer data across applications.
Another thing that Clint, perhaps, forgets to mention is that they are among a select group of companies with an international presence: they have team leads in Canada, India, Indonesia, Philippines and now China. He says Asian small businesses, with subsidiaries, tend to use multiple CRM apps in contrast to American small businesses, which use many multiple applications.
For the future, Cazoomi says the company is ready to expand its practice for applications such as NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics etc. If past performance is any indication, that shouldn’t be a tall order for them.
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