Comments on: 3 reasons why we picked BatchBook as our CRM tool

By: Rod

Rod — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 21:08:33 +0000

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.

By: krishna

krishna — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 15:44:05 +0000

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.

By: krishna

krishna — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 15:42:14 +0000

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

By: Shaun R Smith

Shaun R Smith — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 11:58:34 +0000

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!

By: Mike Deutsch

Mike Deutsch — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 02:10:51 +0000

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.

By: Comparison of Online CRM Solutions « Shashank ND

Comparison of Online CRM Solutions « Shashank ND — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 06:07:36 +0000

[...] http://zebugroup.com/2009/03/3-reasons-why-we-picked-batchbook-as-our-crm-tool/ [...]

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 18:16:55 +0000

Thanks, I've been weighing the three, you've just convinced me to go the way of BatchBook.

By: Julie

Julie — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 19:12:47 +0000

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.

By: Promod Sharma

Promod Sharma — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 22:04:31 +0000

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.

By: Promod Sharma

Promod Sharma — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 14:04:31 +0000