3 reasons why we picked BatchBook as our CRM tool
Over the last fourteen years of being mostly a marketer and occassionally a sales fella, I have run through my gamut of enteprise and entrepreneurial CRM software. The only one I came to nearly loving was the original (free) Seibel Personal Edition, which we used in our first startup, Impulsesoft. Despite the lack of multi-user support in Siebel PE, we made do. Alas just as we were hitting our stride, they discontinued it—I suspect, when they found out that I was actually able to get my job done with it.
With the virulence of a jilted lover I ran back into the arms of that rule-lined temptress Microsoft Excel. I’ll admit I flirted with ACT, had a drunken evening with GoldMine and actually paid $29.95 for Iambic‘s SalesWarrior on my Palm powered Kyocera phone (circa 2000). Yet I always returned to Excel. By the time Salesforce.com began its meteoric rise, I had become a bureaucrat. So I watched from the sidelines – a C-level executive who no longer used anything other than Excel.
Starting again on our own, and boot-strapping Zebu meant I was back to donning the sales hat, working the phone, pressing palms and mailing my heart out. So we were back to looking for CRM software! Of course with the world having moved on, we never bothered looking for a PC client, and decided to go Web 2.0 – the bulk of my evaluation time was spent with HighRise, ZohoCRM and BatchBook. While I briefly spent time playing with PipelineDeals and Oprius, I was already too far along, with the others, for these to ever be serious contenders.
For those of you looking for the Quick & Dirty summary version here it is:
BatchBook – we picked this finally because of
- its simplicity – unbelievable simplicity
- the fiendish power of superTags
- its incredible support
and while we have become paying customers of BatchBook now, when we started its pricing (which began with a free offer for three users) tipped us over!
For those of you who want more, check out the presentation that was made internally to share why BatchBook.
HighRise We began with unabashed admiration for 37Signals. We found ourselves reading, watching and discussing DHH & JF.
- we started as (paying) BaseCamp users and struggled with use of separate tool for contacts
- we also stumbled initially because their free version did not support three users(our team size then)
- they’ve arguably led the simplicity (less is more) movement; But we kept running into things, we wished were there in HighRise, and did not get the feeling of being listened to.
- pricing was a niggling more than BatchBook, but was not a deal killer
One of the mysteries I never figured out was, I got going using HighRise, but could not never get the other members of our team rolling – maybe ‘coz they were moonlighting then or for some other reason. But by the time we got to evaluating BatchBook, my partners got active and BB edged out HR! Once we got rolling with BatchBook, while we did find many things missing in BatchBook as well, that we’d have liked to have, superTags almost always gave us workarounds.
ZohoCRM Personally, I have been a big advocate of Zoho (Projects, Writer & Sheet)
- ZohoCRM is almost the antithesis of BatchBook or HighRise – every feature imaginable is available
- Even a highly motivated user, as I think of myself, needs a one or more unit college course to use it
- alas – the near poetry of Zoho Writer or more recently Folders is totally lacking in the ZohoCRM UI design – the sheer complexity resulted in loss of ease of use and the UI left much to be desired. Seems like someone not yet steeped in the ways of early Zoho products designed it. Deal killer!
This might explain why, despite Zoho’s 3 user free license, I could not get any of my partners to use Zoho CRM.
Now that we have been ardent, paying customers of BatchBook, key areas we are hoping to influence include:
[a] more extensive reports (of anything v anything in the database, ala Quicken, my all time favorite)
[b] better sales deals/opportunity tracking without losing the ease of use, nor contorting too much with superTags
[c] even stronger API support, so that can extend reports and synch with other apps.
I’m curious what problems you were running in to with Highrise? I like Highrise and tried Batchblue, but I thought the interface wasn’t very good looking and I like things to look good :p I also like the tasks in Highrise. It seems organized a little better too me and everything seems to load a little quicker. Anyway, I would just like to hear what you couldn’t get done with HR.
Thanks!
Great review and good luck with BatchBook. We’ve built a new CRM that your readers might like to compare. It’s called Javelin and is currently in beta with full launch very soon. We’ve stayed with the keep it simple and intuitive approach but included opportunity/pipeline management and easy customization options (e.g. add custom fields for contacts and/or tags) to make what we think is a more complete CRM solution.
@Paul, — our use of HighRise preceded the Deals functionality they have recently launched. This deal tracking was important for us which superTags helped us do. Also some of it was merely a matter of our team adopting one solution which they seemed to do better with BB. The To-dos in BB do much the same as Tasks in HighRise, but without the ability to create groups of To-dos. I agree with you that Batchbook has some issues with speed, which I am hoping they will resolve soon. Honestly my biggest challenge was to getting my team online on one tool, and the team found it easier with BB. Would love to hear any inputs you have.
@Duncan – thanks for your heads up on Javelin. will check it out.
sri
sri
krishna,
Nice post! I enjoyed the thoughtfulness and the subtle humor
I’m in process of trying out BatchBook, as well as Dabble DB – http://DabbleDB.com – and since I’m converting from a spreadsheet, where I’ve been ranking my contacts based on various scores (e.g. how many events they’ve attended; their interest in my service, etc.) it seems at this point that DabbleDB makes more sense, and is more flexible for the future also. Interested in your thoughts.
Thanks,
George
I have looked at Javlin and Batchbook. I like them but would really like to find a low cost SaaS solution that works out of the box with Outlook. Any thoughts or suggestions?
Interesting thoughts well expressed.
For more jobs visit http://www.staffingpower.com
Thanks for this post and the slideshow.
I've experimented with different CRM solutions over the years (desktop, web, Blackberry). Each was too much of a hassle to use. Simplicity is essential. Connections with social media are intriguing.
I'll give BatchBook a try.
Thanks for this post and the slideshow.
I've experimented with different CRM solutions over the years (desktop, web, Blackberry). Each was too much of a hassle to use. Simplicity is essential. Connections with social media are intriguing.
I'll give BatchBook a try.
Just had a look at Capsule CRM (mentioned in the Comments as Javelin). On first glance, it appears not to have the very broad functionality of Batchbook… but I wish Batchbook would learn from their design! Clean, uncluttered and stylish.
Thanks, I've been weighing the three, you've just convinced me to go the way of BatchBook.
[...] http://zebugroup.com/2009/03/3-reasons-why-we-picked-batchbook-as-our-crm-tool/ [...]
1 yr+ later, and I’m really glad I found this post. Krishna, great job putting together a concise, clear comparison. So, not surprisingly, here’s one more guy who had never heard of BatchBook but will definitely check it out now.
Thank you for the review. I’m wondering if you have any updates? I’m transitioning from a spreadsheet system to a CRM and was debating between Zoho and Highrise. You’re article has me now throwing BB into the mix.
Thanks again – just the smart pithy analysis I was looking for!
Shaun,
Thanks for the compliment. As each of our businesses grow – and I sure hope it does – our needs grow as well. In my view Zoho, with its kitchen sink approach is still a lot to achieve a little – I suspect, if you are doing a lot of deals with a variety of clients, it may do the job. With HighRise – at least for me – religion got in the way viz, 37signals deciding what’s best – still admire those guys but was not for me. In many ways depending on your needs HighRise may do the job. BatchBook, as we have grown (or our needs, with more data in the database) we find a little challenged with reports, but we like it enough to stay with it for now. Good luck!
sri
Mike happy to hear – somehow this post has been the most popular one on our site, despite getting a little bit long in the tooth. The people at BatchBook in many ways is what keeps me with them and their plucky keeping-at-it I frankly admire. Maybe its time to revisit the whole thing and write up another update or review. Good luck.
About a year ago we left Salesforce for Batchbook, mainly because everyone felt Salesforce was too heavy and with the amount of information you needed to enter it discouraged users from using it for simple leads or initial opportunities. Batchbook was working for us but then we signed on distributors that we wanted to share leads. Batchbook makes this way too complicated to do. We setup the distributors as what they call “Basic Users” who can only see what they are allowed to. But only the administrator can assign or allow a Basic user to see data. So we either would have had to make everyone in our firm a Batchbook administrator (which might work for some firms), or we have to continually send e-mails to our Batchbook administrator to share contacts we setup for the basic users. In Batchbook they have contacts, companies and deals. If you have a deal, with a company and just one person in that company, you have to manually share 3 different pieces of information to allow a Basic user to see it.
About 3 months ago we posted this in their forum and others who experienced this same problem asked for a better support for Basic Users, but still nothing has changed. We are looking at other basic web CRM systems and hope to find one that has implemented a better security model. Other than a few glitches they have it seems pretty decent.