Polski
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| Revied by | CRM Idol Primary Judges - EMEA |
| Company Background | If you are a fan of Jordi Labanda design you will be thrilled with Atollon´s company presentation – stylish, classy and beautiful. If we were giving corporate identity design awards this would be the clear winner. Atollon CEO Jan Safka did an excellent job in explaining their differential factor from the internal company perspective: combining a rather functional business model with fun descriptions to engage customers and staff. Atollon is the island, and its employees the island habitants. Jan Safka is the chief islander, Jan Volf is the chief toucan (engineer), and Jakub Gottwald is the chief shark (sales) – here goes Atollon´s management team. What we liked very much during the CRM Idol demo and presentation is that the whole team was present, we felt like being part of an Atollon team event. The company was founded in 2000 and since then has consistently built a successful client community – 120 by 2011. Clear focus from the beginning was to build the business on online collaboration and client engagement to its target segment: companies that sell human workforce or expertise (professional services sector). They are organized in some kind of virtual organization: intellectual property ownership is based in London, the physical headquarters with about 15 professionals operates from Prague, SaaS services are delivered from Ireland, and strategic partners are allocated in Brazil, Romania and Poland. A quite interesting, unusual geographical set-up. Atollon´s mission statement clearly indicates what they are in the market for: help their target customers in growing their businesses – in their own words: “your business growth engine”. Check out their website on www.atollon.com |
| Market | The professional business services sector in the EU is one of the biggest growing industries, giving employment to roughly 3.5 million people in the top 5 markets UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain – that´s about 11% of the whole population in these markets. The sector is composed of legal, accounting, book-keeping and auditing activities; tax consultancy; market research and public opinion polling; business and management consultancy. Atollon´s target customers are represented in this segment. Also, this segment is forced by nature to innovate across service lines, and to have an excellent infrastructure in place to serve their customers. Investment in software is part of their business set-up, but they´re very demanding customers in terms of product quality and service and support. Atollon is not the first mover in entering into this market with CRM functionality (the typical key players are SugarCRM, Salesforce.com and MS Dynamics CRM), but it quite is a niche player in offering a platform not only including CRM but also key functionalities for the professional services sector: accounting, invoicing, recruiting – a complete set for a SMB to operate efficiently without having to invest in different platforms and applications (you can even renounce on outlook or Lotus Notes due to Atollon´s e-mail application…). Here the competition is rather easy to manage, self-developed unknown tools by very small local players. Atollon´s go to market strategy starts with understanding the challenges of their target customer segment for delivering excellent service – that´s the right way to start: I listen to you, I observe you, and based on your requirements I develop a technology platform for you that helps you concentrate on your core process and allows me to take care of the rest – and it´s beautiful and catches your eye… When listening to Atollon´s presentations we were impressed by their passion presenting their product and calling it beautiful – we didn´t know that an interface could be beautiful, now we know it can! |
| Product | Atollon´s product strategy builds on the engagement strategy they follow with their company set up: a functional set of software packages described with fun and unusual wording. Their main products are:
In terms of functionality itself, and focusing on the CRM related products (Lagoon atollon, Shark atollon, Desk atollon), there is not really anything new in the industry, selecting target groups for marketing campaigns, tracking sales opportunities and maintaining customer data in an accurate manner is standard CRM functionality and provided by any other known player – but not as beautiful as with atollon. We understand that the company´s USP considering the product (apart from the UI) is the set of functionality it can provide to SMB with the not CRM related modules Octopus, Fisherman and Workshop, and the quite manageable investment in the technology platform. The selling packages are divided into 2 options: core platform (obligatory) + standard edition or professional edition, in a price range of 16€ / user / month for the standard package in pre-paid modus up to 38,5€ / user / month for the professional package in “pay-as-you-go” modus. Regarding the technical environment Atollon itself positions its robust three-tier system based on standard, popular and innovative technologies, server written in C++ accessible through web service, and client personalized development based on Adobe Flex technology. |
| Vision | Atollon clearly understands the market they are positioned in, and clearly understands that the only way to survive is giving a differential value to its customers by excellent work and customer engagement. Currently 80% of projects are being contracted based on customer referrals by happy and satisfied customers – without incentives. That´s a pretty good reference in the software industry where customers tend to complain more than to spread a positive word of mouth. And Atollon is perfectly conscious of its strengths and weaknesses – very important to being able to differentiate from competitors who say they have no weaknesses. |
| Final Thoughts | All in all Atollon gave us a good feeling during their presentation, well prepared, involving the whole team, and most importantly: they engaged us with their fresh spirit and entrepreneurial, customer-centric thinking and doing. If they keep delivering “memorable experiences” in their projects and with their product, we see them well prepared for the future. |