A David Creation

#1 Base CRM

As of April 2013 Base CRM, by Future Simple, still leads the way for the best mobile CRM for small business. They now have “native apps” for the iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, iPad & Android Tablets. They also have developed some key plugins, apps and extensions for those still using Microsoft Outlook, Gmail & Mac.

The reason I give Base first place is how quickly they were able to develop a clean and useful application for many of their users. In just a few short years, the majority of businesses owners and salespeople have ditched their Blackberry and now use either and iPhone or an Android phone. These were the first two apps that Base CRM developed. They were thinking ahead! There are always little bugs to squash in every app I’ve tried, but Future Simple has done a good job of releasing Apps where the main CRM features just work: contacts, deals & task. I am one of their testers, so I give them constant feedback of things I want to change, update and/or bugs to fix. But all in all, it is truly an awesome experience.

Those who want to experience their first CRM or don’t want to spend a lot can try Base CRM for free. The mobile features don’t cost anything. It is only when you get above 50 sales (deals) or need more “cool” features that you pay for the app. Companies who run a simple sales cycle and rely on Google or Outlook for their main tools, might get by with their basic paid version of $15 a month. I would recommend their main paid version for those who have a more complex sale and want to carefully track each stage of the cycle. This would cost $45 a user per month. This is still not bad for how much time you save, and it makes sure you don’t drop the ball with your sales process.

#2 & 3 Salesforce and Zoho

Zoho CRM is basically a copycat of Salesforce. The features are pretty similar. Salesforce was one of the first cloud-based CRMs on the market and is still considered the leader. Salesforce had one big problem that has hurt their foothold into the small business world. This is only my opinion form observing them over the years, by the way. First, I think their prices were too high early on for most small businesses to justify, and second, they had way too many features and apps. Almost all the companies I spoke to about what CRM was best for them had already explored Salesforce. They all said basically the same thing: “It is too expensive. It is complicated and it has more features than I need.”

Salesforce has since lowered their fees and has begun to cater more to the small business market. They seem to have a lot of funding, so I will assume they will maintain a strong presence.

I have tried their iPhone App several times the past couple of years and consider it functional and good. Though it is not my favorite nor as easy to use as Base CRM. I have a number of clients who use Salesforce and seem to like it. It does require a bit of training, and their tech support is fee-based. I will end with this, even though their tech support is fee based, they are good. They will help you do what you want with your CRM as Salesforce is VERY customizable.

Zoho CRM’s iPad and iPhone Apps are actually pretty slick and easy to use. I like the design (UI) and user experience. My number one problem of why I don’t recommend Zoho CRM all that much is their pricing structure is such a pain. Everything is an Add-on. i.e. You want more storage, add more per month. You want to use our mobile app, add more per month. You want to _______, add more per month. This is the standard complaint I’ve heard from folks who have tried Zoho. Sorry Zoho, love your product but the small business owners out there need a simple product with 1 price option (hint hint).

#4 Pipeline Deals for iPhone Only

This is sad that I have to put Pipeline Deals in 4th place. Why? Because they have one of the most stable, reliable and simple CRM products I’ve ever used (desktop / cloud). I rarely ever find a bug using their product. Many of my customers actually use CRM as well. This was because they were early adapters to integrating their product with Google Apps for Business. They also has a mobile version that you could (still can) access from your mobile browser. The mobile version does work ok for quick access, but overall it is very clunky.

The good news is that Pipeline Deals is finishing up their first native iPhone App. This will be released within the next couple of weeks of writing this post. I’ve been testing this App for a couple of months, and it is very good. Their goal is to make an App that replicates what you can do with their online version. Version 1 is not quite there, but the basic functions that one needs in the field work quite well. I think Pipeline Deal customers who have an iPhone will be thrilled with the first release. Also their price point is really the best on the market. You can’t go wrong. They recently increased their prices, but I think that was a good move. One price: $25 per user/per month: plain and simple.

My hats off to Pipeline Deals. They are slower in development, but I think it shows a lot of wisdom. My guess is they operate on very little debt and borrowed funds. They make sure they release quality updates and products. Their tech support is the best I’ve seen as well! They post their phone number on their home page!

So there you have it. I only named the top four mobile CRMs I’ve tested and like. There are probably another dozen that I did not list. Some of those are fine products as well. For those who like testing and trying out CRMs for fun, give Nutshell CRM a try.

Let me know what you decide on and why.

 Base CRM from Future Simple keeps getting more robust every month I use their product. To learn more about the details of what this simple CRM can do, read my previous reviews on Base 1 Post Here and 2. Post Here

In short, Base CRM is the best small business CRM on the market that works beautifully with mobile smartphones, tablets, Macs, PCs and Google Apps. Key feature updates:

• It offers both online and offline access of your data when you are on the go, which many competitors do not currently offer.
• Incredible native apps (installed on your device): iPhone, iPad, Android & Windows Phone (offline).
• Integration with Mailchimp for Email Marketing: This is a brand new feature this month. It works well. You can add people to select list. I am a huge fan of Mailchimp for sending emails, so I am excited about this new feature.
• Sending emails within Base CRM: If I’m too lazy to send an email within my Google account, I can do it within Base. If I really wanted to, I could just use Base for sending/receiving. (I still like my Google Apps though). It notifies me if the person has received and read my email as well. It then stores a copy within the customer note section. New Feature: All my emails sent from within Google are auto BCC’d to Base. No more having to remember to auto BCC or forward emails.
• Sales Automation: Those of you who have a set sales system in place will love their easy to use Sales Automation feature. You can setup all your Sales Stages and what Task will auto populate when you’ve told it to do so. This is perfect for those who have a sales team and want to make sure you remain consistent. Sometimes this feature can be overwhelming, because you definitely will get reminders and task that you have to check off to move on. Regardless, this features is a real plus. (Paid users only)
• Deals: Easy to create, track and manage deals from a desktop or mobile device. You can add files to Dropbox, set follow up task, run quick reports on where you are at in the pipline/sales stage and more. The deals in Base CRM are a real plus.
• Pipeline & Reports: Their reporting features got a major upgrade and facelift this Summer 2012. The graphs and reports are cleaner and easier to view.
• Easy Tagging and Contact Look up. (Multi-Tags too)
• Custom Fields
• Task Features are getting better. The task features within Base CRM are powerful but still need a bit of improvement. They work just fine, and I use them everyday. My main “beaf” with their task management is that currently I can only set task on the hour: 12, 1, 2, 3. I then get a reminder 1 hour before. I’d like more customization here. That is coming, from what Base has told me. So expect some Task improvements Shortly. I’d like to add a feature request to have Google Calendar be 100% synced to Base…no bouncing back and forth. I want to create an event with a customer within BASE and have the interface be Google. It is ok to have a wishlist!
• Google Gadget. See Above Picture. I can add a note, a task or a new contact right within my business Google Apps account.
• iPhone and iPad Apps: When Base released their almost completely bug free iPad version in late August, they gave the iPhone a facelift too. I liked the old version, but this one still is quite user friendly and bug free.
• Overall New Design: Base CRM also was given a completely new and improved look. It is cleaner, faster and easy to use.

Base CRM is really a great Customer Relationship Management program for the small and medium size businesses. For the little guy who doesn’t need it for lots of sales, he cause use Base for free. For everyone else, $15 a user for the basic plan and $45 a user for all the advanced features. It is worth the cost based on all the features and easy of use.

After over three years of test driving dozens of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programs, I’ve decided to endorse my two favorites: Pipeline Deals and Base CRM (affiliate link). This week’s blog will be focusing on Pipeline Deals: the Pros & Cons of this cloud CRM. As a reminder, both Base and Pipeline Deals are very effective for managing your marketing, sales & customer base. If you want to have good tracking in your business, you need to settle upon a good CRM program. If you are not wanting too many features to overwhelm you, Pipeline or Base will do the trick.

Pipeline Deals

PROS

• Very simple but good interface and CRM features. This is not a complicated CRM. The design and features have improved over the years, and it is very easy for users to figure out and start using in very little time. Most of my clients have settled upon Pipeline Deals. I believe it is because of the price point ($15 a month per user) and the ease of use. The CRM features are there: Contacts, Calendar, Deals (sales tracking), Reporting for Sales & Marketing, Document and Call/Email Communication Storage.
• Integrates with Mailchimp: With a few clicks of a button, a user can quickly add new contacts to their Mailchimp email marketing list(s). Mailchimp will not allow duplicates, so even if you accidentally add someone twice, it will remove it.
• Works Well with Google: More and more businesses are using Google Apps for email, calendar and other business communications. Pipeline has created a beautiful two-way sync with their calendar and Google Calendar. It is one of the only programs that has such a slick and easy two-way sync. Many others on the market are buggy or only a one-way sync. They offer a two-way Google Contact sync as well. That works, but I’ve seen a lot of duplicates with this feature. Therefore, I encourage users to disable the contact sharing. Finally, Pipeline has what is called a Google Gadget. This installs a scaled down CRM of Pipeline in each email you receive in Google’s Gmail. A user can add specific emails to a contact’s profile, BCC important emails, add notes, create events, task and more all within Gmail. This is a must have feature, saving you time having to login to your CRM to make quick changes and updates. 
• Goals Tab: One of the only CRM programs on the market that has this key feature. If you have more than 1 salesperson working for you, you’ll love the Goals Tab on Pipeline Deals. You can set individual and team sales goals: monthly and annual goals. It works very well. Every time a salesperson changes a deal to won or lost, it updates the goal tab.
• Branding & Custom Fields: A pretty common feature in most CRMs, you can install your company logo within Pipeline Deals & change the colors the tabs, custom fields and buttons. The custom field area is also very easy to use and a key feature. You can set custom fields for DEALS or CONTACTS. Some of my clients use it for their pre-qualification process: Size of Home, Estimator’s Name, Referral Source, and much more. You can have multiple choice options, dropdown menus, long and short text and more. Very useful feature!
• Custom Reports: Want to know how many leads from the Internet you had the past 7 days? Pipeline Deals can make a custom report called “Internet Leads The Past 7 Days” and show you the details. Pipeline’s reporting features are very custom to your liking and have many variables and criteria. If you are an analytic junkie, you can download those reports into an Excel spreadsheet and continue your tracking further.
• Price: One low price of $15 per user per month. It is one of the least expensive CRMs on the market with more than enough features for small businesses.
• Support: Bottom line…their support is the best! I know all the guys over at Pipeline Deals. They are all awesome!

A few weeks ago, Pipeline Deals released a new featured called “Goals” which is just outstanding. It is one of the few CRM programs that has this feature. Goal setting for a salesman is key to his or her success. It is also crucial for a sales manager or the business owner so he too can keep track of his estimators and sales team. By using the new “Goals” tab, an owner can set weekly, monthly or annual sales goals along with prospecting goals. I like the prospecting goal idea too. You can create a goal for your sales person to get 10 new business contacts a week or write 20 thank you notes per month or knock on 5 doors a day! Then you can keep track of his or her progress. How cool is that?

About Pipeline Deals

I’ve been using Pipeline Deals for a number of months now. I like some of the bigger companies, Salesforce and Zoho but found Pipeline to be simple, easy to use and affordable. Another reason I selected Pipeline is the two-way sync with Google Calendar and Contacts, which I use all the time. Their support team is also incredible. Pipeline CRM is a scaled down Customer Relationship Management program built for small to medium size businesses.

Future Request

What I’d love to see in future updates are the following:

• A native App for Smartphones. I really don’t like using the Mobile Web App. It is very buggy.
• Make Contacts easier to look up on every page of Pipeline. Right now, I have to do a couple clicks. I’d like to be able to do a quick find of clients
• Quick view of documents. I upload my notes and documents to Dropbox and have begun keeping a copy in each customer’s “folder.” However, when I click to view a document, it wants me to download it. I don’t want to do that. I’d rather just see a snapshot of the document to review notes: similar to Google Docs or Mac’s Preview
• Integrate with Google Voice, not just Skype
• More integration with forwarding emails automatically
• Better Integration with Google Contacts (Right now each new email I get creates a new contact)
• Update the Calendar functions and Task to make it more user-friendly like (Google Calendar) Right now too many clicks and typing. The task need to have reminders too (Mobile version)

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!

I’ve been keeping a close eye on a cloud computing CRM program called Zoho CRM for a year or so now.Zoho CRM is a lot like SalesForce but is a lot cheaper and has less features. However, it may not be long before Zoho because a possible threat to the expensive Salesforce giant.

Benefits of Zoho

If you are looking to go to the clouds for your business (online applications as opposed to software installed on your desktop) and you do not need a lot of bells and whistles, Zoho CRM will pretty much do the job. It is free for up to 3 users. I’d recommend the enterprise version, which is around $25 a month and gives you four unique users. You can access your data from anywhere around the world in real time. It also has a good email add on, integration to Quickbooks and syncs with Outlook. Zoho CRM also syncs with a Google Apps account. By the way, I’d highly recommend Google Apps for your business, IF you are trying to get away from Microsoft Exchange and a dedicated server.

The New iPhone and Android Version

For over a year, Zoho has promised Zoho CRM on an iPhone, Blackberry and other mobile phones. They have finally pulled through and created a Beta version. It is not an “App” but a mobile-browser version: m.zoho.com/crm#

The application, as I expected it to be is quite buggy. However, it is also awesome! It does not work well with Google Calendar at the moment and some of the functions are a little “sticky” or don’t work well yet, but I expect in a few months, Zoho CRM for iPhones and Androids will be a great tool for small business users. I do not foresee a Zoho CRM iPhone App in the near future, as that would be very expensive and this company is slow at developing.

The Bottom-line

I really wish I could fully recommend Zoho CRM for my customers both for mobile and online usage. If you happen to be tech-savvy and don’t mind overlooking a few minor bugs, then you should try this program out. It is an excellent start. I’ve already submitted a few of my request to Zoho, so we’ll see if they begin to fix those bugs. Give it a try, and let me know what you think.