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To better serve her customers, Pamela O’Hara is willing to open the door to her competitors.
The co-founder of Providence, R.I.-based BatchBlue Inc. has helped launch a web service called the Small Business Web — a collection of integrated web services that is open to any company with a publicly available application programming interface.
The Small Business Web (thesmallbusinessweb.com) has let BatchBlue — with eight full-time employees — mash up its social customer relationship management (CRM) software with an e-mail marketing platform and an invoice management application.
Other participants include help desk software makers, on-demand printers and a company that lets businesses mail in receipts, which are then scanned into invoices.
What if another web-based CRM product wants to join the mashup?
“The more the merrier,” O’Hara said. The five founding member companies are looking for a way to make the online business community more attractive to potential competitors.
“What’s really going to make this work and make it a powerful tool is just to keep getting new companies so there’s just naturally going to be overlap whether it’s direct competitors or just some overlapping,” she said.
The Small Business Web came together while the founding companies were preparing for the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, in March. BatchBlue, North Carolina-based receipt mail-in service Shoeboxed Inc. and Canadian 2ndSite Inc., which operates billing software provider Freshbooks.com, had already integrated their offerings, O’Hara said. At South by Southwest, along with The Rocket Science Group LLC’s MailChimp and Bootstrap Inc.’s Outright, they branded that integration and opened it up to the world.
In April, British on-demand printer Moo Print Ltd., which earlier this year opened an East Providence facility for printing its trendy business cards and marketing materials, joined the Small Business Web.
“From our perspective it’s a great way to find new customers,” said Lisa Rodwell, vice president of marketing and product.
The Small Business Web is a one-stop shop, Rodwell said. She and O’Hara believe the core of their customer base — the very small business or sole proprietor — is growing, as laid-off professionals strike out on their own.
Mike Sapien, principal analyst with Ovum, agreed that newly independent operators will be looking for ways to replace the enterprise software tools they enjoyed at their former companies. But he questioned whether that opportunity will last. “Are those people really committed to that business, or is it just something temporary until they can re-enter the corporate world?” he asked.
But O’Hara points out her free CRM service has about 5,000 user accounts, with about a 33 percent conversion rate to the company’s premium offerings. For people going into business with some skills and a network, the return on investment is palpable, she said.
“What they don’t tend to do is look down their pipeline and see which deals are the ripest,” she said.
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