The December 2008 issue of CRM Magazine tells us what went wrong with Entellium, an upcoming CRM platform.  Amidst corporate fraud and mismanagement, customers using Entellium’s services are in quite a pickle: how do they get their data off of Entellium’s servers, and how much time do they have to migrate to a new CRM platform if/when Entellium goes dark?

To that, I’ll add: is Entellium even telling their customers what the future for the platform holds?

Extra! Extra! Read all about it here.

Needless to say, the reputation and corporate governance practices of a company should play an enormous role in the buy process for customers in the market for a CRM solution.  The reputation for web-based CRM systems (like Entellium Rave) are even more critical because all your data is hosted by them.  If they go dark, so does your data.

Takeaway question: if your CRM provider went out of business tomorrow, what are your contingency plans for your customer data?  Having a plan never hurts.