By Chris Bucholtz

There have been a lot of CRM vendors taking aim on the small business market. It makes sense from an economic point of view – most of these potential customers are CRM “greenfields,” not companies replacing existing products. It’s a growing pie chart, so grabbling a slice of that pie can prove lucrative as time goes by.

However, the tendency is for large CRM vendors to develop offerings for that market segment and gradually drift back toward the midmarket and large customers. You want a small business CRM solution to scale, but that then allows vendors to slide back toward what is their comfort zone in both corporate culture and sales objectives. Sales guys, even at CRM vendors, see bigger as better – why sign up 10 little guys when you could close one big company? After all, that’s a concept that’s built into many of the sales efficiency tools that these companies sell.

It might just be that the best vendors for small-business CRM are small businesses themselves. Take Dalco Technologies, for example. Based in Kelowna, British Columbia, this is a real small CRM vendor with a genuine focus on small businesses.

“I’ve always had a passion to help small businesses compete against the big guys,” said Fred Dalgleish, the CEO of Dalco. Toward that end, he developed Qasper, which he describes as “a web-based business information manager that goes beyond CRM,” integrating other activities like order processing, inventory, issue tracking and service – the kinds of things that someone at a small business who wears several hats might have to handle on his or her own.

It’s built that way for a second reason, Dalgleish said. “It has everything to do with the customer experience,” he said. “Too many CRM products are sales-oriented; the customer experience starts long before they make a purchase, and continues long after that.” Built with that in mind, the system is module-based, meaning that users can pick the modules they need and avoid unneeded complexity by leaving the ones they don’t out. It has an Outlook-based interface; “we knew it was a complex product, so we wanted to have an interface with some familiarity for users,” Dalgleish said. Qasper also transparently synchronizes with Outlook.

The modular approach also helps Dalco maneuver more quickly – when new functionality is developed, it can be rolled out as a module that users can employ easily if they need to. The company’s most recent addition, Qasper iPhone, allows users to add mobility through Apple iPhones or iTouch devices through this modular approach.

Using modules for functionality is one way to avoid “feature creep,” since the users are the ones who control the complexity of their CRM solution. It’s also useful in preventing new users from being confronted by technology they can’t initially get their heads around. “A lot of small business customers are using rather primitive methods to maintain records,” said Dalgleish, “with 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 people each doing things a different way. Instead of an ad hoc, piecemeal approach with lots of spreadsheets, they need to have the capabilities their large competitors can afford.”

Complimenting Qasper’s feature set is its price. A complete version of Qasper Office with all the modules and for an unlimited number of seats within a single corporate entity goes for about $600 per year.

Qasper has a strong ability to scale, according to Dalgleish, but he’s especially eager to sell to smaller companies – companies like his own. Dalco has eight employees, and just three in its headquarters. The rest are distributed all over the globe, and in that sense they may be a reflection of the shape of small business to come.

Small vendors have their own challenges, but so does every small business. Could it be that small CRM vendors have better insight into the issues their small business customers face that do their large competitors? Let me know.