TMO at MWSF - Marketcircle Making Inroads with Small Businesses

by , 12:00 PM EST, January 17th, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO - Marketcircle started with Daylite, a networked relational database behind a contact and opportunity management system to help small companies succeed. Now, with the addition of Billings, a single-user time, billing and invoicing program. Marketcircle is beginning to make considerable headway in giving small to medium businesses (SMB) all the tools they need, according to Marketcircle's CEO Alykhan Jetha.

TMO sat down with Mr. Jetha, "A.J." as he prefers it, at Macworld to find out more.

Daylite 3.x has been a considerable success in helping SMBs get a handle on contacts, tasks, and sales opportunities. The networked, relational database with a great GUI has helped many companies with five to twenty employees collaborate, get organized, focus on what's next and avoid letting customers and opportunities fall through the cracks.

In time, however, the company was able to sit back and build a vision for a more comprehensive set of tools for the small business. That led to the Billings software which has garnered awards and a growing customer base. The key success factor for Billings was attention to detail. "Small companies pay a lot of attention to their Website and business cards," Mr. Jetha observed. "But when to comes to presenting their brand to their customers, their invoicing program often fails to measure up with its look, professionalism, and integration with their brand."

One of the factors fueling the success of Marketcircle is the growing number of small business people who are done with with the frustrations and failures of their PCs, problems that directly affect their livelihood. "A year from last year's Macworld, we're still seeing fifty percent of our business come from switchers," Mr. Jetha reported.

To fulfill the needs of these customers, Marketcircle is working on integrating Daylite with best of breed business applications. Currently, Daylite has integration add-ons for the Xsilva LightSpeed POS system and FileMaker. Soon there will be an integration to Cognito's MoneyWorks. In addition, Daylite has always been able to interface to Apple's Mail with the Daylite Mail Integration Module.

"The SMB market is growing," Mr. Jetha noted. "Many of those people are fed up with Windows and just want things to work right." Marketcircle seems to have found a niche, albeit a growing one, that appeals to those enterprising Macintosh customers who want their business tools to just work.