The Tribune

By Annelia Nixon

Tribune Business Reporter

anixon@tribunemedia.net

A Bahamian entrepreneur yesterday said he has launched a customer relationship management platform targeting especially micro, small and medium-sized businesses in the Bahamian market.

Justin Cancino, Starboard Softworks’ president, told Tribune Business that the ConchCRM platform provides more features than rival products to help differentiate itself from the competition. “It kind of goes back to some of the smaller features like the personal touch,” he explained.

“Because here everything’s so small and you kind of know everybody, and so being able to remember a lot of information about your customer and manage it a lot better because we don’t have a lot of systems built for us,” Mr Cancino said. “A lot of businesses, they’ll use a spreadsheet for their customers.

“So you know there’s nothing in there besides the spreadsheet, or they get some software from the US or Canada or wherever that isn’t really made or it’s bloated full of other features that we can’t really use here because, you know, you can’t connect things to your bank here.,” Mr Cancino continued.

“You can’t connect things to certain other systems like Salesforce and different things that we just can’t integrate with here. And so being able to have something that is very simple, has all the information for each and every island, each and every city in the islands, and being able to really customise the customer for your business or basically for the information, it’s just something we don’t have a lot of. And combining everything into one is also what kind of sets it apart, too.”

Mr Cancino said that, with cyber security becoming a major issue due to an uptick in more realistic phishing schemes and the growing popularity of artificial intelligence AI, protecting companies against data breaches is important. He said two-factor authenticators and other measures are implemented to protect client’s data.

“We host the platform, and what every client of ours would have is they have their own instance of the software. So, you know, you’re not using a copy of somebody else’s. You have your own logo and your own server and everything,” he added.

“And on the server side, everything is encrypted and secure. So even if there was a breach, the information is encrypted and very, very difficult to access. But we don’t even want to get to that point. We have the servers, very secure. 

“But on the customer side, which is where I feel like the main vulnerabilities would be because most people, especially people running a small business, they’re not cyber security experts. Their passwords are usually not that complex. You try to encourage that. So even if they don’t do it, it becomes very difficult,” Mr Cancino said.

“So what we’ve done is we’ve added in two-factor authentication for every user that uses the system. So even if their password is quite simple, they have something like Google Authenticator or some other form of two-factor authentication, so that if they lose their password or the password gets hacked, they still have their phone or text message as that additional line of defence to protect that data.

“That is important because with cloud-based software you can try to log-in from multiple places. But, again, we do things like we restrict it to that company’s IP internally and stuff like that, so it’s not accessible from outside and all these little tiny things that help a lot.

“But really, the two-factor authentication I think is really helpful. It’s not foolproof because nothing is really foolproof, but it’s a very big step in helping prevent access to that. Because this is important data. You know, it’s all customer information, like name, phone number, e-mail, stuff like that. So this is important information you want to keep secure.”

ConchCRM aids in client engagement and management, including grouping and adding customers plus access to pre-built templates that allow for effective communication with customers and leads. “For example, when it is a customer’s birthday, or a lead has not been contacted recently, ConchCRM will email you a daily digest with these details in an easy to read format so you are always on top of your client relationships without taking you away from your day to day responsibilities,” the company added.