Network Hippo: Personal CRM or another horse?

OTTAWA, US: Mercury Grove has just unveiled Network Hippo, the first online Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool that proclaims it puts focus on relationships and leverages the power of social networking. Network Hippo, incidentally, says itself to be first "personal CRM" system.

Unlike existing CRMs that focus exclusively on sales data and basic contact information, Network Hippo evaluates the strength and influence of individual relationships with contacts to find new opportunities, strengthen relationships, and learn more about key people in their ‘network’, claims a press release.

"Network Hippo is the an extremely smart personal and small business CRM system that gives professionals time to focus on building relationships, not building databases," explained Scott Annan, Mercury Grove's CEO. "If information about your contacts is on the web you can find it in Network Hippo."

“Network Hippo is challenging the basic foundation of the CRM industry by introducing a system that focuses on relationships first, empowers individual users, and leverages social networking for companies and individuals to develop strong long-term ‘networks’. Network Hippo is the culmination of the best business productivity tools, smart relationship algorithms, the latest web technology, and the explosion of social networking. “

It provides constant feedback to users on the health of their professional relationships through a contact rating system, and by monitoring how a person uses the system, their business transactions, and by importing their email and phone logs.  Network Hippo provides weekly status updates on important contacts, and reminds users when too much time has passed between interaction, the company adds.  

 

So, would you think there is a possibility against well-entrenched CRM biggies?

“Network Hippo belongs to the individual user - when you leave a job, you take your contacts with you" said Annan.  Other CRM systems like Salesforce.com suffer from low buy-in and use by salespeople who see little benefit handing over their contact's information to their company.  "Network Hippo represents a real 'win-win' between companies and professionals.  Both benefit from a system that focuses on relationship building, not stockpiling information in corporate information silos."