Data Landscape Shifts As Salesforce Buys Jigsaw

Salesforce.com’s $142 million acquisition of Jigsaw gives the customer-and-prospect management software firm a source of business executives contact data. How the deal will change the way this source of prospecting data is made available remains to be seen.

The company is focused on closing the sale, which won’t be final until its second quarter – sometime between May and July of this year. For now, according to Kraig Swensrud, senior VP of product marketing, it’ll be business as usual.

But business-to-business data consultant and Chief Marketer/Direct Newsline contributor Ruth Stevens wondered whether what she called “a valuable source of B-to-B data” might eventually be threatened, such as by requiring it to be accessed through Salesforce systems.

“Is Salesforce planning to operate it as a wholly owned unit and grow the business of making this interesting new source of B-to-B data available to all marketers, or is it going to use it as a way to sell more Salesforce subscriptions?” she asked. “If it’s the former, we’re all good.”

Stevens will probably be pleased to know that Jigsaw will run as an independent unit under Salesforce, Swensrud told Direct Newsline. CEO and co-founder Jim Fowler and COO Kevin Akeroyd will remain with the company.

Bernice Grossman, president of DMRS Group Inc. and co-author with Stevens of a B-to-B data source study, was more unabashedly enthused about the sale. “I think it is a win-win,” she said. For all of the existing Salesforce clients who want to use or want to test prospect data, this acquisition will make it easier, faster, and may offer some sort of [advantageous] pricing opportunity.”

Salesforce’s Swensrud said the merger would offer “lots of natural synergies.” Pressed about potential changes to its pricing structure, however, he said the company had nothing to communicate, save that Jigsaw would continue to operate as it does currently. Under its current structure, Jigsaw provides access to names either for cash or points earned by members of the business community through uploading business card information.

And he echoed Grossman, saying that Salesforce would be looking to cross-pollinate offerings between Jigsaw customers and its own. The work Jigsaw does with information service firms such as Dun & Bradstreet, Hoovers and LexisNexis, for instance, will allow Salesforce to “go in deeper with those companies,” Swensrud added.