
Behind the Scenes: Building Breezz Sales
Many businesses want to improve sales and boost productivity and there are many products that promise just that. The hard part is sifting through all the different products on the market and finding one that is flexible enough to fit your business type and industry.
Breezz is a new crm app that was created to provide users with a fully customizable and flexible crm application. Basically, regardless of your industry, business size, and requirements, Breezz can mold to suit your needs perfectly.
Based in the hi-tech heartland of the Middle East, Breezz is the newest app from Powerlink Ltd, a 20 year old, successful Israeli hi-tech company.
We met up with Amir Segev and Noga Schryer, the creators of Breezz, to find out more about their inspirations and goals for the app.

When did you first become interested in CRM?
Amir: In the late 90’s I was studying computer science at Ben Gurion University in Israel. I became interested in how big companies operate. First I was looking at content management systems or CMS, which led me to internal portals used to manage large amounts of corporate data. From there I found out about CRM and how two large enterprises were ruling that market.
Who were these 2 companies?
Amir: Siebel and Peoplesoft. A former Oracle employee, Oracle was a giant in the market of database systems, quit Oracle in1996 and founded Siebel systems. It was an enterprise specializing in CRM platforms. Peoplesoft was an ERP solution, enterprise resource planning, that had a few systems including a very strong CRM that was really popular.
You have to remember that people were using CRM software before the days of fast internet. They would actually go to a store and buy a disk with the software on it, and install it on their computer.
When did you start building a CRM?
In 1997 when I was a student, I started building CRM when I was learning how to build websites and information systems. In 2003, we got fast internet in Israel. I always believed that business operations inside organizations should be handled in modular, dynamic systems.
I had a background in html and JavaScript from my degree, and saw how using such a system for operating a business was wonderful. With sufficiently fast internet, I could deliver CRM over the internet in the same way that you surf a website.
With an online CRM solution, I could deliver a live demo almost instantly to customers, and to provide them with a new version all I had to do was update the website, rather than ship out CD's. The difference was crazy.
So, it seems that the internet totally transformed CRM, would you agree?
Amir: Yes, completely. There were two significant shifts that have shaped the landscape of CRM systems from 1999 to the present day: delivering a solution online (Salesforce had the slogan ‘no software’) and paying just a subscription rather than a license fee. CRM became accessible to small businesses rather than just huge enterprises.
Siebel gradually realized that they were losing their market share to Salesforce, but they did not adapt and go online. Today, going online seems incredibly obvious, as that is how all software companies work — however at the time, going online was perceived as a gamble. Salesforce completely took over Siebel’s market and Siebel was sold to Oracle, coming full circle. Peoplesoft was also bought by Oracle as Salesforce came to dominate the CRM arena.
Along with online CRM, many companies started to develop Saas — software as a service — products for business management systems. Today, there are thousands of CRM platforms tailoring to all market segments, to businesses of different sizes and from different industries. There is CRM software developed specifically for the real estate and construction sectors, for example.
So tell me how Breezz came into the picture.
Amir: With Breezz, we are trying to solve two things. Firstly, we want to maximise usability with very simple-to-use software. Secondly, we want to provide businesses with everything they could possibly need, including CRM, marketing software, and customer service software, in a software package that will automatically integrate with each other. Each business can choose how many of the products they wish to use, and all products will connect seamlessly.
Even though it is very simple and straightforward to deliver software over the internet, it is still very hard to provide the best possible product for the customer’s needs, in terms of usability, features, and user experience. It remains a challenge to perfect the mix of these three factors for the right customer. Many companies have been experimenting with combining CRM with other services such as marketing software.
The ultimate debate is whether to use an all-in-one system, which may not offer the best individual products to suit your business needs yet all data syncs together; or using different softwares for each purpose, but having to deal with integration hell. The market is heading towards the second option, of using different softwares, but also a huge integration hub between them. This concept is the reason why Zapier is a successful company, as it connects different apps together. Microsoft Dynamics 365 have 6 products used by businesses that talk to each other. Google is another good example, as you can easily switch between the different programs that all connect their data.
Noga, what inspired you to create Breezz?
Noga: When I came to Powerlink five years ago, Amir and I spoke a lot about industry trends. At that time the buzzword was ‘big data’ and processing large amounts of data for analytics was a big deal in the business world. The industry leaders were starting to create tools to analyze big data.
These first data analytics products were too expensive and complicated for small to medium sized business to utilize. The idea behind Breezz is to give smaller business access to an easy to use CRM tool where the user doesn’t have to be exposed to complicated data processing — just a clean and simple UI.
What makes Breezz different from other apps on the market?
Noga: Most CRM systems are geared toward larger companies, with a lot of money to spend. Breezz was created for small to medium sized businesses and to provide them with an affordable and flexible CRM product.
We also thought about different issues with the sales and service processes we have dealt with over the years at Powerlink. These insights help us make Breezz into a more efficient tool, and one that can simplify complicated business processes.
What do you think is one of the most important features of a CRM system?
Noga: Well obviously it needs to be user-friendly but another feature that is very important is flexibility. Breezz’s flexibility is another thing that sets it apart from other systems. This allows any company to implement Breezz, regardless of their industry.
The system is customizable and can be set up to work with pretty much any type of business. Analyzing your business data with customizable dashboards is simple and can reflect any data you want to view about your company.
This is the first part of the Behind the Scenes at Breezz. Stay tuned for the next articles in this series.
