Alibaba.com launched Alisoft, a business software company aimed at China’s small and midsize businesses on Monday.
The company initially will offer five types of software: CRM, inventory management, sales force management, financial tools, and marketing information management, it said.
Of China’s more than 40 million SMBs, fewer than 10% have adopted advanced software systems, unlike SMBs in more developed markets, where approximately 60% use back-end management and CRM systems, the company said.
The new company is offering its software services for free, but will start charging for some of the services during the first half of 2007, it said. It did not specify a date or price.
Alisoft will take over the Alibaba Group’s messaging and communication tools, both business-to-business and consumer-to-consumer, which will be merged under the name Ali Wang Wang. In Mandarin Chinese, “Wang” means “king” and “net” or “network,” but is also the Chinese way of expressing the sound of a dog’s bark.
Alibaba.com is China’s most popular business-to-business e-commerce site. Alibaba also operates Taobao, the country’s most popular customer-to-customer auction site. The company is based in the Zhejiang province city of Hangzhou.
