37Signals Highrise on the Horizon

February 27th, 2007

I had recently posted about my quest for a Fast, Integrated CRM solution and also about my attempt at another online software service—Google Apps.

In the last few weeks 37Signals of Bascamp, Campfire, Backpack, Ta-da Lists, and other hosted applications have released news about their new people exchange manager application. Jason Fried said that they were not going after applications that offer heavy reporting and pipelining and that it is a minimal application that really makes it easy for organizations and teams to manage exchanges between individuals and groups.

Here is an excerpt from Jason’s announcement:

So what is Highrise?
Highrise is a shared contact manager that helps you keep track of who you talk to, what was said, and what to do next. Like Basecamp helps you collaborate on projects, Highrise helps you collaborate on people. You can use it alone or with your co-workers. You can think of it as a company-wide, web-based, shared address book with a few twists.

Why did we build it?
We talk with a lot of people. Vendors, lawyers, accountants, journalists, customers, etc. Keeping track of who said what, when they said it, and what needs to be done next is complicated. A jumble of notes on paper, in email drafts folders, and post-it notes is a surefire way to miss this and forget that. Further, we wanted to build a shared tool so I could read up on conversations David had with John Doe before I called John Doe. Knowing the history of a company’s past interaction with people is a great way to save time and make future conversations more valuable.

The follow-up posts available as of today’s post are found here and here. I will post more links as they become available.

Update March 2, 2007: Below is a list of links to all posts by Jason Fried et al regarding the Highrise Previews. I will update it as they do:

Entry Filed under: Productivity

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3 Comments Add your own

1. Bill | March 2nd, 2007 at 11:58 am

As a start-up we’re facing the same conundrum as you: trying to find a good hosted CRM solution. We want something that can grow with us as we mature, but that initially has a marketing and SFA bias. 37Signals’ Highrise sounds interesting but it (apparently) lacks marketing and SFA features.
2. Jay | March 2nd, 2007 at 12:09 pm

Bill,

Who knows what to use? I am just one guy and my big issue is that I can’t do what I want with any of the CRM solutions out there. I like the idea of SFA but the issue is that many hosted applicatinons can’t automate repetitive tasks based on time such as creating ticklers for sending emails or scheduling email follow ups for certain types of targets.

Highrise, I think will be primarily a communications logging tool and not much more. Who said what to whom and when. I don’t need all the BS reporting capabilities but what I wan’t is the ability to do some of the things that are possible in some desktop applications such as automatically scheduling a follow-up and other rules based actions. Real SFA and not just a sales and marketing application.

This is where SugarCRM and vTiger (both installed applications) fail. Neither has scheduling and rules based actions. Sure I can schedule it manually but if I have a rule that I call a client one week after sending a proposal I shouldn’t have to manually set the action, I should be able to select the action from a dropdown of next actions and get prompted by the system.

Best of luck on your search. I have gone back to paper and emails until things get better.
3. Fast, Integrated, Hosted &hellip | March 2nd, 2007 at 1:54 pm

[…] of its Contact Management Tool formerly known as Sunrise—now Highrise. You can read my first impressions on it or the announcement from […]

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