Today, Highrise CRM by 37 Signals added opportunities tracking, calling it ‘Deals’. This feature had been one of the most requested by active users for over 18 months. And was launched today in its typical non-chalant way. After the initial euphoria, the reality sets in and here are some thoughts.
The interface is what we’ve come to expect from 37 Signals, all around clean and intuitive, one of the best in the business. The buttons are there to be used while out of the way of the way of eye scan paths. Much like a good butler, out of your way until you need it. This part of it has always been well done and it is their core strength.
Click on the button ‘add a deal’ and you get this screen. Here you can see the information to be used is the name of contact or company; the name and description of the deal; the amount; category, deal owner, and a permission chooser. Good, clean, simple.
Another cool factor is it allows attaching notes, files to the ‘deal’. Making it easy to track the progress and issues. For those who are also using Basecamp, it presents an interesting choice whether to use this Highrise feature or Basecamp’s traditional feature for discussion threads. That can be another subject on my blog later.
Yet, herein lies the problem, notice the amount is only available in US$, Euro, British Pounds, Yen, and Korean Won. What about the rest of the currencies? Understand you can’t fit all currencies into this drop down list, it will be too long? Why not let user ‘add in’ their own currencies? Or leave blank, it’s better.
There’s a feature to add in billing per hour, month, or year. But what about per day?
There’s a filter to show deals in the last 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, 6 months, this year, and last year. Problem is most sales measurement are taken by this month, this quarter, last month, last quarter. Rarely does anyone track its sales by a rolling 30 days, or rolling 90 days. I guess by trying to simplify, it leaves out core functionalities.
Then there’s the archilles heel of Highrise, lack of export capabilities to CSV or Excel. The whole point of tracking deals or sales is the ability to further analyze the result and compare sales and missed opportunities. If the program is intent on being simple, then it should allow for people who want to ‘complicate’ things to export and analyze. Why is that not available is not clear.
In summary, good new feature, needed it for a long time. Great in ease of use and practically no learning curve. Miscued on the currencies and lacking in reporting. And no exports.
Want to learn more, you can watch the video here.
Filed under: CRM, Productivity Tagged: | 37Signals, CRM, Highrise, Salesforce automation
