Considering Jigsaw Data Fusion? Consider This:

I recently completed the implementations of Jigsaw Data Fusion (JDF) in one of our expansion stage portfolio company’s Salesforce.com database. For anyone who is not familiar with JDF it is basically an integration between your CRM system, and Jigsaw’s Database of over 18 million business contacts and 3 million company profiles. It then matches the records in your CRM system to records in the Jigsaw database and flags records as in sync, out of sync, or not matched. You can than allow JDF to automatically override your existing data with their data so that any matched records will be in sync.

  While this sounds like an amazing service, there are several considerations to take into account before signing up for JDF. Above all however, the most important consideration to take into account is this:   Do you trust Jigsaw’s data more than your own?   While jigsaw may be a great source for new leads, depending on your business, there is a good chance that most of the prospects in your CRM system probably have accurate contact info (even though it may not always seem that way). If this is the case then you probably will not want JDF to automatically override your existing prospect data. 
JDF can also be good for appending blank fields on records in your database (it does this automatically). However, if your goal is only to append missing data, than there might be better options out there that can provide more valuable data than Jigsaw’s basic business card level data.   Another thing to consider is your primary prospect profile. Run some searches in Jigsaw for some of your prospects, and try to build a list of target prospects. If the results are low and you don’t find any of your prospects in the test searches, chances are that most of the records will be unmatched (in which case jigsaw doesn’t really add much value).

Other questions to ask are:

• What are you actually going to do with the data when you get it?
• Do you need JDF to do this?
• How does JDF fit into your current goals and overall company strategy?

Furthermore, from my experience dealing with their support (which was okay) I got the sense that JDF is like a Jigsaw pet project that they haven’t really put too many resources behind yet.   All in all JDF could be good for some companies, but I probably would not recommend it to other expansion stage companies with a lot of already existing prospects in their database.