Installment number 2 of the Entellium situation: Well it is now official, Entellium's CEO and Top Financial Officer have been arrested for Wire Fraud which can carry a penalty of 20 years behind bars. Picked up by the FBI with one denied bail because he is considered a flight risk, Entellium's CEO and CFO have been arrested Tue adding to the already unfortunate situation facing CRM vendor Entellium.
With this addition to the events the future of Entellium is not looking good. It seems 50 million dollars of investor’s money was received based of fudged financial books. Stated in one release there was roughly a $400,000.00 per month misrepresentation of Entellium's books which caused investors to hand over much larger amounts of money then granted. As time passed these large amounts of money have seemed to run dry with some speculation that offshore accounts have received some dollars.
The question now is where will all of roughly 850 Entellium's costumers go? As I have previously commented on one site I believe the giants Netsuite and Salesforce.com are not a good landing spot for these customers in flight as they tend to lean towards large corporations and not SMBs, which made up the majority of Entellium's customer base. Entellium's average client was stated to be nowhere near above 100 users which is only a drop in the hat to Netsuite and Salesforce.com. As I look around the CRM playing field I see that Avadian and Salesboom.com have both showed interest in purchasing the customer base of Entellium but no other names have surfaced yet. This makes me wonder why no other company has jumped, as they say, make hay when the sun shines.
For SaaS CRM vendors the sun is certainly shining as x Entellium customers will be looking for new homes. From the two CRM vendors which have surfaced so far, I believe Salesboom.com to be the best match for Entellium customers since both these companies focuses the majority of their time on Small and Medium Sized Businesses. Entellium has or was around for roughly 8 years now and Salesboom.com has been around for 7 to 8 years and is showing a strong future. Where ever Entellium customers end up scurrying to they better ensure they can receive a swift and smooth transition with minimal impact on their own business processes.
Out of this entire ordeal I can't help myself by feel bad for the customers and employees of Entellium, a company who only a short period ago was hosting trade shows and marketing aggressively. These are the real people who will be affected from these events as they unfold and I hope both the current or x clients and staff of Entellium find a comfortable new home.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Entellium CEO and CFO Behind Bars, One Considered a Flight Risk!
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6 comments:
This is a terrible situation for Entellium's customers, the disruption to their businesses comes at the worst possible time. That said, I respectfully disagree about running to another small, private company like salesboom. Financial stability and viability should be a major factor in determining where to go next. I've worked with SMBs for many years, and they have been very successful with salesforce.com. They have products, services, and employees specifically focused on SMBs. To say that they don't care about these businesses just isn't true. Plus, their CEO recently appeared on Mad Money and said that he's sitting on over $823M in cash as insurance to make it through these tough economic times. That's the sign of a company that will be around for the long haul and your best bet for investing in a new CRM system.
I think Salesforce are much more focused on large companies but also sell to SMB's, i think NetSuite specializes in small and mid sized businesses.
I would also disagree that Salesforce.com is a poor choise for SMBs. I find it humorous because it seems that Salesforce had their start with small to mid-sized companies and only recently have begun to gain traction with large organizations. They have 47,000 customers - most of which cannot be large companies. There aren't that many large companies in the country.
My own company is small, and yet, we use an Enterprise Edition of Salesforce. We also work with InfusionSoft, which is geered entirely toward companies with less than 50 employees. Microsoft Dynamics is another option, as is SugarCRM.
Entellum customers have many viable options in the marketplace. They simply need to pick the one that suites their needs best.
I think Microsoft CRM has the best chance out there to pickup the SMB customer that Entellium will leave in the cold... its going to be all but trust for these companies..
thanks...Crm software
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