Offering "something a little different," LongJump has formally introduced a catalog of Web-based business applications for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) to manage people, information, and processes.  

 

The suite introduces an online marketplace of Web-based applications in key functional business areas such as Finance, Marketing and HR, for small and medium-sized businesses to "use to improve worker efficiency, information management and collaboration among internal and external teams," according to LongJump officials. 

 

The product's online marketplace lets users with no programming skills create, publish and share their own situational applications that solve a specific business problem.

 

LongJump officials say the company is a hybrid of "two ends of the spectrum" in online business apps, with Google and Microsoft (News - Alert) on one end and "more nimble start-ups entering the space" on the other. The service is based on the platform of parent company, Relationals, a CRM provider to more than 100 enterprise media companies such as Hearst Publishing, Cox (News - Alert) Enterprises, Gannet, and The Food Network.

 

The offering is comprised of a business platform and 14 business applications, including Customer Service, Sales, Marketing, Finance and HR. 

 

LongJump’s offering is being pitched to small businesses who "cannot afford expensive enterprise-level software that is taxing to maintain, cannot be easily customized, and does not integrate with other business applications," company officials say. Users have the ability to rapidly create “situational applications” and publish them to LongJump’s online catalog. Situational applications are customized applications that companies frequently need but cannot easily obtain and which solve a specific business problem either for the short-term or long-term. 

 

Through the end of this year, LongJump will be offering all of its applications for free for a 90-day trial period.

 

Among the applications is SFA, described by company officials as "a complete toolset for managing sales operations. Teams can track progress and share customer information with integrated repositories for prospects, customer accounts, contact and opportunity information, and much more."

 

LongJump’s online catalog of business applications is available immediately and will be free to use until December 31, 2007, when formal pricing will be announced.

 

Earlier this month Relationals, primarily a vendor of customer relationship management (CRM) and sales force automation (SFA) for the publishing and media industry, announced that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has selected the Relationals on-demand CRM platform to "streamline their sales processes including lead management and targeting, marketing and outreach, opportunity management" and advertiser support.

 

"No other system provides the comprehensive approach to ad sales operations more than Relationals," says Jamie McGinnis, product manager for the newspaper. "Their proven value to the media industry and their pre-sales support efforts have been remarkable."

 

The challenge faced by the Post-Dispatch was to "centralize sales operations to improve customer retention, identify new and missed opportunities, and streamline reporting," newspaper officials said.

 

In August Relationals announced that Gannett Co. deployed Relationals CRM to "streamline sales operations, increase opportunity potential, and improve advertiser communication across 45 of their daily newspaper properties, including The Cincinnati Enquirer, The Arizona Republic, The Indianapolis Star and Asbury Park Press."