What CRM system should we use? There are a lot of CRM systems around, but where do we get most for our money. Do we really need a full CRM or is it in fact contact management we are requesting?
I found a good report from CRMguro. This point out the following vendors for the small/medium market:
• ACT2000 (Contact manager) • Goldmine Front Office (CRM) • Maximizer 7.0 Enterprise (CRM) • Commence RM (Low end CRM – USA) • SuperOffice (Low end CRM – Europe) • SalesLogix (Mid market CRM leader – USA) • Margeting.manager (Mid market CRM leader – Europe) • UpShot.com (Hosted solution) • Salesforce (Hosted solution) • Salesnet (Hosted solution)
A god place to find information on SFA (Sales Force Automation) and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is on CRM4MSE and www.crmguro.com. On CRM4MSE I found great reports on SuperOffice vs. Commence RM and tools for evaluation CRM systems.
On crm4sme there is an article about Microsoft entering the SME CRM market in Q4 2002 – this is very interesting how this could change the CRM-market.
I tried out w.bloggar because I hoped that this windows tool could provide drag n'drop functionality for images and url's, but it still need improvements. I also need spell checkking but w.loggar does not support this.
I'll have to keep looking for a new tool.
I read an article in Wired about a new thing called GEOcaching.
If you are (like me) one of the geeks who have bought a GPS, but when it get down to reality, you never use it for anything, then you should try geocaching.
Around the world (134 countries) is hidden around 25000 caches. A cache is a small box with a few items (keyrings, CD's, etc) and a log-book. Sometimes the also carry a camera, so you can take a photo of yourself when you discover the cache.
On the geocaching site you can registrate and view a list of the caches closest to you.
I have only discovered 3 caches, 2 around where I live and one on my vacation in Rhodes. I also tried to find one near the Danish city Odense, because I was in a business meeting there already. This was not a good experience - I ended up in the middle of a very wet corn field all dressed up in the Armani suit and then I discovered that I have entered the wrong coordinates in my GPS for the cache - bummer!
Well, I would recomend it to anybody - the kids love it and so do I.
Well, I have read quite a few places about weblogs, but the article on Blogroots inspired me to try it out on my own site hoerup.dk.
I am pretty bad at taking notes (this goes way back to school and university where I never took notes - very bad habit) so this is the ultimate test.
Even though, I am often missing keeping tracks of the technologies I analyze and the websites I visit. I am almost daily looking for new products and are evaluating them against each other, but often I forget the mid-results. Especially when a colegue 2 months ask why we don't consider this or this product I just say that the other is better for us, but I can't argue why. This doesn't work for me.
So, I need this, but I need something easy to update, but flexible to work with my existing website, developed in PHP.
First I checked google to find a PHP-based weblog system, which supports multiple blogs and multiple members for updating with different permissions. After scanning a few different system (now, I did it again, I forgot to write down which systems I checked out) I found that Drupal was the system with the most features build in PHP. It had a lot of features; also features usually not found in weblog systems, like polls and other community like features. I installed it on my server in about 10 minutes - this is extremely easy. It was possible to use it, but pretty hard to change the design, if you couldn't live with the included 3 templates. My main problem with the system was to remove or change the top-navigation bar, so I dropped to use it again.
I found Userland but it looked like than In order to get full functionality, you need to buy the product. Well, this is ok, some developers must live, but I was still looking for a better system which would work with my existing server - preferable some Open Source product. I searched through google for alternative systems and found a lot of very positive reviews and links to Movable Type. Hmm, this was a perl based system, but it was using my database MySQL. After carefully studying the manual I discovered that this was a system, which upon updates generated a static version of the weblog. It is possible to alter the templates and include PHP code (or anything else), so then it is possible for me to get my dynamic menus added to the top. An extra plus is, that the templates is written in some of the most beautifull HTML I ever seen - this has taking CSS to what it was intended, keeping structure and design separated.
Well, now I have found a system I like and created a few weblogs, which besides from this technology weblog includes weblogs to keep track of all the funny things my kids are doing and saying.
Let us see for the future, if weblogs and I would get along - I sure hope so!