Simple CRM That Works with Google Apps

Posted by David Chism | Fri, Sep 24, 2010

 Simple CRM That Works with Google Apps
I’ve been keep­ing an eye on some full scale CRM pro­grams in the cloud and a num­ber of sim­ple and less com­pli­cat­ed CRMs for small busi­ness for many months now and have some excit­ing news to report. Pipeline Deals, a sim­ple and easy to use CRM for small busi­ness, final­ly made a big change to their cloud-based CRM. They inte­grat­ed a two-way sync with Google Con­tacts and Cal­en­dar. They are also on the Google Mar­ket­place, mak­ing sign­ing in a cinch. A two-way sync makes Pipeline Deals miles ahead of most oth­er online Cus­tomer Rela­tion­ship Man­age­ment sys­tems. I am sur­prised that Zoho, Tac­tile, High­rise, Batch­books and most oth­er com­pa­nies have not inte­grat­ed a two way sync. So why is this such excit­ing news for small busi­ness? If you are like me, I’ve com­plet­ed switched from Microsoft prod­ucts to a Cloud-based busi­ness. My busi­ness is run using the fol­low­ing: a Mac, an iPhone, Google Apps, Drop­box and 37Signals’ Base­camp. I did not use a CRM, because noth­ing synced well with my Office in the Clouds.” I’ve been test­ing out Pipeline Deals CRM and so far…so good! I can make an appoint­ment with Google Cal­en­dar, and it shows up in my Pipeline CRM account. Also, if I cre­ate a new con­tact on my iPhone, that syncs to Google Cal­en­dar, which then syncs to Pipeline Deals. I must add 4 items for my Pipeline wish list to make it an almost per­fect program: 
  1. I’d love to see a Native iPhone and Android App, and not web-based. The cur­rent mobile ver­sion does work well but has its lim­its. The sched­ul­ing of an appoint­ments do not work well on Pipeline’s mobile ver­sion, for exam­ple. But now I can just con­tin­ue to use Google Calendar!
  2. Make the flow of cre­at­ing a new lead to cus­tomer eas­i­er (cur­rent­ly a bit con­fus­ing where to start and enter data).
  3. Cre­at­ing and man­ag­ing deals (oppor­tu­ni­ties) are a bit con­fus­ing as well. I’d stick to what peo­ple are famil­iar with: Oppor­tu­ni­ties. I’m still fig­ur­ing out how to use deals”
  4. Make the Mobile Ver­sion’s activ­i­ties (events) with more details: loca­tion, time, reminder, (like Google/​Outlook details). It is cur­rent­ly more set­up for Task” that activities
All in all, Pipeline Deals is excel­lent for track­ing your sales on the go! Now that it is one of the first to tru­ly sync with Google Apps, it makes it my favorite! Pipeline will get my busi­ness, and I’ll stay with them…especially if they make my wish­list come true. Get a copy for your estimator/​salesperson today. It is only $15 a month!

About David Chism

David Chism started his business out of a passion for helping small contracting businesses grow, be more profitable and become better known to their target clients. One lifelong hobby of David is using techie gadgets. So this blog is a place where he writes about technology, marketing ideas, just for fun (humor), personal thoughts on small business and more.

     
   
       

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