Man, if there was ever unusable software that showed more promise–and thus–was more frustrating, I can’t imagine it. 37 Signals Highrise CRM is ultimately useable as a place to store contacts and contact information. It’s got some rudimentary TODO features…but it lacks so much that makes it frustrating.
What it does right–is a DEAD simple interface. It’s got an intuitive and easy-to-learn|use|do vibe. It has a zero-learning curve bias, and it’s seriously cool. I want them to upgrade it so I can start using it. It’s got taggable contacts, a good amount of info you can put in, notes, privacy settings (dead simple), and other features.
It’s got a concept called cases where you can add contacts to a case based on what’s going on; and assign tasks and share info with a case. I can imagine that that would be helpful to keep realtors abreast of what’s going on with deals, but man-oh-man does it suck.
It is easier than Facebook–no–it’s what Facebook should be.
What Highrise Doesn’t Do Well:
Iterative work: processing loans requires certain steps that happen on every deal (i.e. order title, appraisal, VOE/VOM/VOD etc). There’s no "activity series" that you can schedule for one or many contacts. Marketing campaigns are the same way; there’s no functionality for this process–you can use tags as a crude kludge, but it’s not ready for any kind of workflow or rules or customization.
This is based on the "free" version; if the "paid version adds any of these features (and it doesn’t appear to), correct me so I can become a raving fan.
The bottom line is that this has the coolest interface and most promise of almost anything that I’ve seen, but it’s a few features away from being useful. The balance they have to strike is depth vs. speed. Compared to Zoho and Free CRM, it was WAY faster.
Right now I’m leaning towards using Zoho’s docs.
OH…By the way.
The Net was abuzz this week with the addition of forms to the spreadsheets, but I’m really more excited about the fact that you can now lock COLUMNS as well as rows; this makes it much more useful to work with Google Docs. Now I’m off to find some stuff that I’ve missed.
And in case you missed it:
LH on adding work life balance to your GTD weekly review
Copyblogger on the Rule of 3
The Positivity Blog gives us Confucius
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
marlowe 02.09.08 at 11:48 am
I use 37 signals products–Basecamp, specifically. Basecamp does just about everything you want, except for the “Case” tracking function; BC allows for extensive to dos (with templates), calendaring, milestones, client intranet support, etc. All with that dummy proof interface. Problem: What HighRise does, Basecamp doesn’t, and the two don’t really talk to each other. This is a result, I think, of 37 Signals’ operating philosophy, which is “not one more line of code than necessary.” They keep threatening to “integrate” the two, but the closest I’ve seen them come is using OpenID for signal sign-on, so you can go back and forth between them.
chris 02.09.08 at 12:10 pm
marlowe » So is there a calendaring function–or not so much? Welcome, edison guy.
Shane 02.10.08 at 7:37 pm
It can be a difficult balance between including too many features, making it more complicated and more difficult to use and oversimplifying it, as you say.
There are a number of tools available in the CRM marketspace that tackle each in their own narrow focus, but depends on what you ultimately want to do. If you want a tool that does everything, then maybe Salesforce or SugarCRM?
Our group has developed a Simple CRM tool which is specific to sales tracking, http://www.simplesalestracking.com
chris 02.10.08 at 8:38 pm
Shane » Shane- Very cool. I’ll give it a whirl; I want something with the ethos of a rails solution; if you could combine Highrise and Basecamp, I’d be a happy guy. I want sales tracking + some sort of iterated activity manager. ACT is simple enough, but it is really stupid to share.