GeeKs Blogging @ dotCOM

Highrise Customer Relationship Management

by Nitin Jain

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Hi,

This post should be a welcome break from the run-of-the-mill Siebel stuff. I had written about Doorbell CRM coming out of its beta a couple of weeks of ago. I got interested because somebody referred to Doorbell being a head-on to Highrise CRM by 37 Signals. So, we at GeeksBlogging@dotCOM sat down to take a stock for ourselves.

We went directly to Highrise CRM official website. Highrise comes across with a nice intuitive website which is catching to the user.

As Highrise itself puts it:
“.. Highrise is a great way for business to keep track of who talked to whom, what was said, and what needs to happen next ..”

Major sections highlighted as the strengths of Highrise are as follows.

Contact Page
Every contact in Highrise gets his own page. I could see several multiple tabs towards the top-right page, with many different names. I am assuming that the most popular ones are being listed on the top while I can get to the complete list of Contacts with the Contacts tab.

This is something that I guess even the major CRM vendors like Siebel, Oracle and others may take a cue out of. Though the page was simple, it has everything very neatly organized, and had everything that a Sales person, or a Complaint Handling guy would need it at hand. The photograph of the person is shown as an image straight away. It gets really cluttered in Siebel and Oracle. If I need access to some literature and stuff, I need an extra mouse click, which is at times annoying.

I am also equally sure that such an arrangement will not work if I make the things a little more complex with all the extra details. It would become more and more difficult to organize things on the screen. It is just a choice on what is the scale you want your CRM to work at. This is fine for Highrise if they don’t want to introduce new features in future. Now, is it really so?

Tasks
Call them Activities or Tasks, they are the most important job of any CRM system. I need to understand and remember all the past discussions with the customer. Else, the very basic premise of a CRM is broken. Linking of Contacts and Notes is a nice feature that I liked. But, hey, I can’t see the simple search box when I need to search in the plethora of phone calls I have made. I only see a filter on the top which allows me to filter based on the Task Status. This is a very important feature that is missing, and not too difficult to implement we feel.

Deals
This is something different than the general concept of Quotes and Orders. Highrise divides the Deals in Pending, Won, and Lost Statuses. It even has a filter on top to indicate it.

Once again, where is the Search box, sire’? Also, I sorely miss the concept of Leads and Opportunities. For the ones still wondering, there’s a lot of difference between these terms when it comes to business on the ground. Hey come on Highrise, even Sugar CRM has the concept.

Permissions
Obviously, no?!
It has some nice features. One allows me to create a new group and assign permissions to that one. I like this one. Can be more extensive, but, for a CRM this size, I am happy.

Contacts
People are the real things we need to interact with. This tab helps out here.

Color choices
Nice for the UI features. Users can set this as per their own feel.

Cases
This is a nice feature I felt. This is a grouping of all related stuff. Notes, contacts together related to a particular case. Some bells ringing at the back on my head. Are the people from the Public Sector and the Medical Industry listening? Highrise may be onto something serious here.

Poof!! It’s been a long post. Clear verdict is it, there is still lots of catching up for Doorbell CRM to do, if it ever needs to catch up with Highrise. Highrise in any case has the early mover’s advantage.

However, a still have the same critique as I had for Doorbell. Even if these CRM Systems are targetted for the SMB Industries, what about scalability? I am not even questioning robustness as yet here. As an Small Business owner, that is the one of the important things I would look at. I expect my business to grow, aren’t these CRM companies with me on this?

My review for Doorbell, and Highrise,
“.. Nothing like no Account Info, no talks of Integrations, configuring Products and Price Lists, automatic advising of new products on a Sales Call, Forecasting, integration with other Business Intelligence Systems, and many more.
..”

Pricing is another contentious issue. I would get some pretty robust and high quality CRM systems set up for slightly higher prices. I am sure tweaking the price a little bit, will go a long way for Highrise.

Moreover, Highrise has been made available from 37 Signals which in itself is a known brand with its famous Basecamp feature. The only thing that I believe in, if you really want to hit, hit hard!

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