Jigsaw launches Data Fusion to clean up sales contact lists

Jigsaw today is launching its cloud-based Data Fusion software for acquiring and managing sales prospect records so that companies can use them to reel in clients more easily.

The San Mateo, Calif.-based Jigsaw said that Data Fusion can automate the collection and management of sales prospects, integrating the data into customer relationship management (CRM) databases from vendors such as Salesforce.com.

What Jigsaw tries to fix is an age-old problem: most contacts in sales databases are out of date. It does so by keeping its own accurate and updated business contact list from a community of over 800,000 business users. The Jigsaw records are updated in real time and come with name, title, company, work email, business phone, and address.

Data Fusion is now available on Salesforce.com’s Force.com AppExchange application platform.

The new offering leverages the Jigsaw database to move CRM record management to the cloud, or centralized servers accessible via the Internet. The company says the result is that it can automatically clean out bad records. Data Fusion is available as a monthly subscription service, but customers can reduce the fees by contributing contacts back to the Jigsaw system. The company is a partner with Salesforce.com.

Jigsaw was founded in 2004 and it has contact information for 12 million business people and profiles of two million companies. Investors include Austin Ventures, El Dorado Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners.