Britain-based sales-i, which describes itself as a "real-time sales acceleration service for front line sales people," has launched its sales intelligence service into the U.S. market.

Since January this year, sales-i has acquired 70 new customers and has signed a deal with Integra, an office supplies and IT dealer group in the U.K. and Ireland, company officials say. Integra has white labeled the sales-i service, rebranded it as Sales Alert and offers it to Integra members. "Close to 25 Integra dealers have signed up to the service since its launch three months ago," sales-i officials say.

Sales-i officials say they're confident they can mirror their British success in the U.S., "and if early signs are anything to go by, it looks like USA business supplies companies will be as enthusiastic about the service as their U.K. counterparts," company officials say.

 
Kevin McGirl, co-founder of sales-i, said the U.S. office supplies market is "six times larger than the U.K., a huge market for sales-i to tap into. We expect sales-i mobile to be a big winner in the U.S., making information available to front-line sales people on their cell phones and Blackberries."

Sales-i launched sales-i mobile in February this year. The product gives sales professionals visibility of sales information and customer buying alerts delivered to their cell phones.

Earlier this month Sales-i announced that it "boosted its sales intelligence service" by adding some CRM functionality to "reduce the burden on SMEs to acquire a full customer relationship management system."

Sales-i's customers include small and medium business, industrial and office supplies companies. While some have already invested in CRM systems, others prefer to "bolster their sales intelligence system with some key CRM functions," the Sales-ians say.

The vendor already integrates into CRM systems including Salesforce, NetSuite (News - Alert), Microsoft, ACT and Goldmine. The decision to add CRM functionality to its own sales intelligence service, company officials say, was "to supply those SMEs who don't yet need a full CRM product, a lighter alternative."

 

Sales-i CRM will now enable field-based sales people to record facts about customers and contacts, log call outcomes or next actions during or after sales meeting and manage their sales pipelines.

"We are delighted to be able to bridge that gap for some of our customers with our embedded CRM-light or by integrating into their chosen CRM system if preferred," company officials said.