Painless CRM

Even if you are self-employed (hopefully) you need some kind of system to take care of your clients. And even though you may think that an Excel sheet will do, I have come to the realization that it just doesn’t cut it for me. It’s too hard to keep updated and adding new kinds of data to without messing the structure up etc.

Therefore I have been looking for a web-based CRM system to help me manage the stuff I have got going on with clients. I have tried various solutions such as TactileCRM, but to my needs they often seemed hard to really get under my skin.

That was until I found PipelineDeals.com. This is a system that labels itself as ‘Simple CRM for big business’, and after playing around with the system, I think this is quite fitting.

First of all the system has a very slick user interface, and it allows for a great deal of customization to fit your particular needs. At the same time it seems like a lot of thought have been put into the flow of the application, which makes it very intuitive to use.

Second, there is rich options to import and export data towards other applications, which makes the barriere of starting to use the application and getting max out of it almost painless.

So far I have only found two things missing. One is support for Danish Kroner as a currency, but thats not a real problem, since the currency codes aren’t really used for anything and for reporting purposes I can use Swedish Kroner instead. The other is a way to weigh deals depending on probability, ie getting a better glimpse of what your current sales pipeline is actually worth to give you an idea of how much time you should be spending bulding additional pipeline in order to meet your budgets. I hope this one will be added soon, as it would be really useful to have.

The application costs 15 USD/month/user, and I think it’s well worth the money.

According to their blog, they’re working on mobile versions of the application, which in my mind will only add to the value of PipelineDeals.com.