Every Friday I’m going to be reviewing a vendor in the emergent collaboration space and will provide an overview on that vendor which includes everything from leadership and vision to technology and market focus. If you are vendor that would like to participate, please contact me (email is in the sidebar as is twitter link). The goal of these posts is not to bash or praise vendors but to simply offer an objective view on what various vendors offer so that YOU can decide if they are a good fit for your business. Every post will cover the same elements for different vendors. If you have ideas or recommendations for other items to be covered in these posts then please let me know and I will consider them.
This week I’m taking a look at Blue Camroo. Camroo is based in Toronto with 8 employees. I spoke with Paul Clark, the chief marketing and strategy office.
Integration capabilities
Right now the data within Blue Camroo is a bit siloed but that is because information is typically captured right into the system. So for example, things such as leads, pipeline management, email, price quotes/proposals, project management, support ticketing, and collaboration are all handled directly within the Camroo platform. They are trying to be the complete system which means that integration with other systems wouldn’t be a necessity. However, the API is in beta and will go live before 2011 which will allow for other integration possibilities. Integration with social media platforms such as twitter, facebook, and linkedin does exist.
Support
This is provided via email however issues can be escalated. The Blue Camroo model is focused on self-service which allows them to offer very reasonable pricing for the product.
Pricing
This ranges from $25-$150 depending if you want 1-10 users, all of the information can be found directly on the site.
Maintenance & Upgrades
Upgrades and updates are released around once a month. At least 50% of these updates come directly from customer ideas and recommendations.
Overall direction/strategic vision for the company/leadership team
Blue Camroo believes that businesses are becoming ecosystems that need to combine internal and external resources together to solve business problems. This is especially relevant for small and medium size businesses which tend to be more agile yet also more constrained with budgets. Right now Camroo focuses on knowledge based businesses in the B2B space but this will be expanding by enabling B2C offerings such as e-commerce solutions. The vision for Blue Camroo is to be the all-in-one business solution for customers which can handle everything from lead capture, to support, to project management, to billing and invoicing.
Key differentiating factors from competition
Right now the social network integration is the biggest factor considering their feature set and price bracket. Being able to add leads and track them straight from social networks is not something that many of their direct competitors currently offer. Also, the completeness of the application and their ability to service customers with an end-to-end solution is also unique.
Customization
Users can customize full CSS or can pick from out of the box color schemes. Logos can also be uploaded for further branding. All look-up values, contact roles, how you want to manage your leads, email automation, billing templates and pretty much everything else on the feature level can also be customized.
Time to go live
If you want to create a simple lead-tracking sytem you can be up and running within half and hour. If you want to roll out something more complex with a larger staff then you can be up and running within a week.
Overall technology
Everything is built on .Net and written in C-Sharp and sits on a SQL server. The whole system and all accesses are handled via secure SSL and hosted on Camroo servers. This is an entirely cloud based solution.
Industry/vertical focus
Small and mid size businesses in the B2B knowledge business. The average client has 6.3 users and the largest deployment is around 45 users.
Capabilities (customer, partner, employee collaboration)
Blue Camroo doesn’t offer communities or specific interaction points for a specific type of community yet. However, in the future, features are going to be added which allow for greater employee collaboration. The collaboration aspect is still being fully built out but for now Camroo acts as a platform to help manage your business end-to-end. The platform offers everything from a CRM system to email marketing, billing and invoicing, project management, time tracking, and task management.
My take
Blue Camroo is not what I would really consider an emergent collaboration vendor…yet. But, it appears as though they are certainly moving in the right direction. I would say that Blue Camroo is ideally suited for small businesses. It might work for some medium size businesses but the lack of back-end integration will make it difficult for mid-size organizations that are most likely already running other systems and don’t want to replace them all for Camroo. The collaboration piece is definitely lacking but this is something that I expect them to built out over the next few months along with a mobile client. I must say though, that for the price, Camroo certainly offers virtually everything that a small business would need to actually manage their operations. I also have to admit that collaboration might not be as crucial for a small business as is general operations, however it would certainly be an added bonus.
A small business can conceivably use just Blue Camroo for everything they need to do to operate. It reminds me of a combination of Infusion Soft and Basecamp. One other concern I have is around the bandwidth limits which are anywhere from 1-7 GB/month (basically storage space) depending on the version you go with. Clearly this is not enough for a larger organization but I’m wondering if a mid or even a small size organization would be fine with that limit…maybe. So, I wouldn’t recommend Camroo for an organization that is looking to collaborate with customers, partners, or employees; but, I would recommend Camroo for a small business which is looking to improve their overall operations which is perhaps a more relevant starting point than collaboration.
