Schedulicity Makes Case for ‘A-Comm’

The scheduling space is heating up, with a number of key vendors competing for SMB business, companies such as Groupon and Merchant Circle acquiring and integrating scheduling companies into core activities, and new companies such as MyTime attempting to aggregate all the players.

Bozeman, MT-based Schedulicity is one of the key players in the space, selling scheduling and related services for a range of $19.95 to $39.95 per month, depending on the number of users. The company has attracted “tens of thousands” of SMB accounts, booking 1.25 million appointments per month. This week we talked with CEO Joshua Spitzer was promoted to CEO. We talked to Spitzer this week about his vision for appointment- driven SMB commerce (or “A-Comm”)

Spitzer’s first major development is the revamp of Schedulicity.com. In its new guise, it is not only a portal where people book local services, but one that also focuses on customer analytics and consumer discovery of new services. The discovery effort is a major initiative and was launched in late March.

“We facilitate impulse purchasing of services,” says Spitzer. He notes that every person who books a service via Schedulicity is a potential user of the new portal, and is a strong potential customer of all.

“If they used us to book a hair appointment, they may use us for their next massage or to book an appointment in another industry vertical,” says Spitzer.

Meanwhile, Schedulicity’s development continues unabated, covering 60 verticals. Spitzer says the company remains focused on landing SMBs, which he says is always the hard part. A key part of its strategy is to work with third parties such as CosmoProf, a division of Beauty Systems Group, LLC for hair stylists.

“Developing a valuable supply of appointments is difficult,” says Spitzer. “For starters, you not only have to sell to service providers, you have to change the way they do business.” But the ROI is proven – especially if they use Schedulicity as a promotional engine to help drive new customers for unfilled times.

The company, in fact, has two promotional products that are the beginning of efforts to diversify revenue streams: “Pop Up Offers” allow the company to distribute last minute deals to replace cancellations, etc.; and “Deal Manager,” a self-serve product that enables merchants to run their own daily deal type promotions. Additional functionality will be introduced “later this summer.”