Technology can make some great improvements in our lives – automating or “one-click”-ing tasks, saving time and money, and providing some entertainment along the way. If you’re looking for tools that are somewhere between the casual home user (“too little”) and the enterprise (“too big”), however, you can easily be overwhelmed by all of the “stuff” that’s out there and find your way to the “just right” solution. Here’s how I used my Goldilocks thinking for my most recent challenge: selecting a small business CRM.
The Requirements
Sometimes it helps to have a super-detail-oriented client who’s also moderately technical. This list of requirements came mostly from the client, but I’ve also included a few of my own clarifications.
- Manage / store contacts.
- Sync contact info to the Mac address book and Outlook.
Many users work off of both Macs and PCs and need tools that don’t constantly make them think about when they have to use one versus the other. Bringing software to the browser has been a great way to avoid these battles.
- Sync contact info correctly, so that I don’t have to go back and manually edit each entry to fix mismatched fields, missing data, etc.
If someone could truly automate this process, they would be a kazillionaire. The best I could hope for in this case was a solution that had clear instructions for syncing/uploading of contacts to minimize the amount of errors. - Works well on the iPhone.
No preference on optimized mobile site versus dedicated iPhone app, definitely another vote for browser-based. - Allow case notes / case tracking so that I know what activities I’ve done, will need to do, etc.
Nice to have: ability to create custom templates for to-do lists and follow up activities. - Allow me to set rules (e.g. follow-up reminders) for a contact.
Nice to have: Setting “rules” for a group of contacts. Setting “rules” for a specific activity/event/timeframe. - Optional: Input opportunities (with sizing) / build a sales pipeline / do forecasting / input actual sales.
Including these in the CRM brings us closer to an enterprise-level solution, however there are also smaller systems that play well with others (integrating the CRM with an invoicing tool or email marketing tool, for example.)
The Contenders
Microsoft Outlook
Outlook has very vocal groups of lovers and haters, but I’m guessing most people who work with Outlook in their office every day just see it as another tool. The address book and email capabilities are powerful and they’ve improved search and to-dos, but it’s also a local install, slow, not terribly cheap, and not so great on the iPhone. Not the right solution in this case because, surprisingly it’s “too little”.
Sugar CRM
My friend looked at them for another use last year and had a couple of conversations with a salesperson. Her perception “He was nice but the UI was terrible.” After taking a quick look at their screenshots and demo site, I have to agree. Also, it seems like SugarCRM is targeting enterprise users, companies with very large and sophisticated sales forces (along with IT departments to configure and manage the software and Sales Managers to create and analyze reports.) Doesn’t seem like a bad tool, just not the right fit (“too big”).
Salesforce
I’ve used Salesforce before and generally, I like it. The real power of Salesforce comes from its customization options, the large user community, and ability to have a large selection of tools integrated within one platform. In this case, I needed to recommend a CRM that was for an individual running her own business and with that in mind, Salesforce again seemed like overkill (do you really need a customer service module if you’re the sole proprietor? “Too big.”)
Highrise
Another tool I really like from the group at 37signals. Highrise is billed as “the smarter way to keep track of the people you do business with.” This one would have made my suggestion list, but my friend had already ruled this one out due to her frustration with contact import/export issues (“too little”). I also think Highrise gets to be a little expensive once you get more than a few hundred contacts, but they do have an active, vocal, and supportive community, so I’m going to keep it on my list for now.
ACT
Ok, my first thought on this was “Do people still use ACT?” and apparently, the answer is “Yes!” I think these may be the same people who started with it 20 years ago, but still, that’s a pretty good track record for software. In the end, ACT didn’t make the final cut because it seemed to be a little too complex (there are tons of ACT add-ons, which may be good, but it’s still confusing), it’s expensive, and it requires a local installation. (“Too big” because of all the customization requirements, “too little” because it’s not web based.)
Google (contacts, calendar, etc.)
Well, you don’t have to worry about price on this one. Once again, Google provides some pretty powerful tools for free, but I can’t actually imagine using it as a business class CRM. Although they’ve made some improvements with Google Contacts, it’s still basically a side project for Google that gives you somewhere to store info on all of those people you email. A nightmare if you want to actually plan, manage, execute, and track results. (“Too little.”)
The Winner
BatchBook
My “just right” recommendation for this challenge is BatchBook from BatchBlue Software. They meet the client’s requirements, they’re reasonably priced, and they’re friendly (which is not to be underestimated when you’re setting up new software!)
I first heard about BatchBook via Chris Brogan (see BatchBook is Great for Contact Management for his review) and since it sounded like an interesting tool, I added it to my bookmarks (which came in handy!) Some of the features that made BatchBook stand out from the crowd were:
- Importing everything into BatchBook is about as simple as it gets and they even provide a nice template and instructions for “pre-cleaning” your CSV files before importing your data.
- You can set up to-dos for a contact (or a group of contacts, or just a to-do) and then subscribe to your to-do list via an iCalendar feed. This should work nicely for both Mac and PC w/Outlook folks.
- Although they don’t have an iPhone app (yet), they do have customized mobile presence for the iPhone.
- Pricing is very reasonable (the basic “Navy Blue” plan is $9.95/mo.) and although prices go up based on # of users and storage space, all features are available in all paid plans.
- BatchBook integrates with MailChimp (email marketing) and Freshbooks (time-tracking, billing, and invoicing).
- And, BatchBook has one of the most powerful (and unique) features I’ve seen in it’s “SuperTag” capabilities. “SuperTags” are tags that aren’t only customizable by name, but also by a set of other fields you select.
- Instead of tagging “Jane’s Business” as “business”, you could create a “freelancer” SuperTag that might include “skillset”, “referred by”, “hourly rate”, etc.
- You can use a “social media” SuperTag to add your contact’s Twitter username, LinkedIn profile URL, Facebook URL, blog feed, etc. And those will all now show up on that contact’s profile page – their latest tweets, blog posts, Flickr stream, etc. Pretty cool.
Now it’s your turn… What CRM do you use and why? What criteria did you use to make your decisions (remember, “none” is an answer, too)?
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