Quebec City-based Fortune 1000 has taken software it created for its own use more then a decade ago and released it as the first-ever Canadian-made customer relationship management product for the small and medium-business market.
Called Acomba CRM, it’s the newest addition to the Acomba suite
of software which in-cludes system management, accounting, sales and inventory and payroll management. It is scheduled to ship to resellers within the month and will be available to end users on Nov. 1.
“”We saw the CRM market was now ready for SMBs,”” said Francois Taschereau, CEO of Fortune 1000. “”We decided to introduce a package that we’re going to sell to our customers and to any other small businesses that would like to use CRM.””
Andre Lachapelle, owner of Fortune 1000 VAR Micro-informatique, agreed, comparing the SMB market’s readiness for CRM apps to Bombarier’s unsuccessful attempt to introduce the Sea-Doo in the 1960s.
Fortune 1000, which has been listed on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSX: FRT) since mid-August, has worked with approximately 70,000 Quebec-based small and medium-sized business customers over the past 20 years. With all of that
data floating around, Fortune 1000 developed a DOS-based application to run its own support centre 15 years ago.
It switched to a Windows version five years ago.
Speaking from his own experience, Taschereau described being able to have almost instantaneous access to customer information as “”priceless.””
At $595 per module Lachapelle said Acomba’s significantly less than the competition.
Acomba CRM only works within the Acomba family but Taschereau said subsequent versions will run on other accounting packages. This is part of the firm’s plans to expand its customer base outside of Quebec’s boarders. Currently 90 per cent of Fortune 1000’s business comes from Quebec. “”We intend to sell this technology across Canada to different accounting software end users,”” he said.
“”Accounting software in Quebec is Fortune 1000 territory,”” said Taschereau. “”In the rest of Canada we don’t intend to get number one because we won’t.
But we have great technology that works quite wonderfully with other accounting software.””