I’m currently searching out and test driving a multitude of “social CRM” applications because quite honestly Google Contacts and my Mac Address Book just don’t do what I need them to (organize my contacts, their social presence and relationships).
So far I’ve taken a look at Plaxo, 37 Signals, Gist, Zoho and Salesforce. I’m now taking a look at BatchBlue. Some, like Salesforce, are so overkill for a micro/small business person like me. Some, like Plaxo, just seem to be a basic address book. I’ve long had designs on developing my own system (my husband is a software architect & I could fairly easily take a system he has for his clients and modify it).
My needs are not completely crazy (in my opinion) for someone in today’s world that needs to manage people, information, and knowledge on the Internet.
My “top of the brain” requirements are:
- Sync in my existing contacts
- Delete/merge duplicates
- Live in the cloud with iPhone app & desktop (or browser) access
- Seamlessly integrate with my Google Calendars
- Automatically match my contacts with their social profiles
- Associating external data such as Google Docs with a profile
- Has the ability to attach a scan of their business card (OCR would just be dreamy, but really isn’t going to happen)
- Tagging & categories, of course
- Batch processes like emailing a group of contacts I met all in the same place or have similar qualities (all in a certain geographic area for example)
- Auto updates information based on my contacts changes (Plaxo does this)
- Allows me to view a complete or segmented social stream from a group of contacts, such as all current Twitter or Google+ content or blog posts
- Integrates with other products I use such as MailChimp and WordPress.com
What I don’t care about:
- Matching sales figures or attaching a monetary amount to a contact/lead
Again, I don’t think my needs are out of line with what other people that interact highly online are looking for. Maybe the problem is that developers are developers and users are users. We need to talk.
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I used http://capsulecrm.com/ for a while. I quite liked it, integrated well with my g-apps. But ultimately had to cut back on my subscription services.
I was really enjoying Gist for a while, but it seemed to lose focus. I never really got it to mesh with my workflow. Its the most unique option I found though.
Interested to see what you discover.
I think we just did 🙂
Using Highrise from 37 signals for our small company of 3 employees. Found it really blended with the workflow of the company. I'm sure if you spend the time to find that perfect CRM, it will be worth it in the end.
I know microsoft has a relatively sharp addon for outlook. not a horrible place to start, but if you think your idea ’hot’ and necessary, email me offline. Looking for juicy android. app to sink my teeth in and learn android…..
Highrise is awesome, but there's no virtually no integration/sync with the desktop. Their iOS app is nice, but very (painfully) slow and I don't think they have a native Android app either.
Highrise (37 Signals) just didn't have the social integration I needed. BatchBlue seems to be the winner so far. May need integration with Shoeboxed even though it will cost me a good chunk of change to get all my business cards into the system. I have an old CardScan but the software that comes with it is GARBAGE.
+Yerachmiel Altman I'm a Mac 😉 although I do have a VM of Windows XP on my desktop. I use Thunderbird for my email.
Sounds like an interesting project for me to take on… I'm open for a chat, +Lynette Young 😀
I'm a professional Android/WP7 developer, BTW 🙂
Just passed along your ideas/wish list to someone looking for ideas for development 🙂
BatchBook is the clear winner for me now. It's about 95% of what I need!
Have you tried flup.com. But the site is now on now off