Posts filed under 'Productivity'
If you have been dreaming about the paperless office like John at Duct Tape or me recently searching for CRM solutions and my trials with Google Apps you know that integration is key.
Today, Freshbooks, the online billing system announced that you can now bill and share data with your Basecamp account.
This is a long anticpated integration for many users of both applications and the day has finally come. We are still waiting for a way to manage the rest of the books but Mike McDerment says we’ll have to wait.
For me, like many Freshbooks forum members we are found having to enter data twice. This is partly because there is no open API available to interact with Quickbooks. Intuit is following the Microsoft, closed model where Intuit applications will integrate with only those expensive, partner applications such as MS office, ACT! and other such overpriced over-featured garbage. (Ahhh, I really wish Inuit hadn’t bought out M.Y.O.B (Mind Your Own Business) in Canada. It was simple, fast and easy has hell to understand.)
McDerment says that business owners don’t use accounting software (Quickbooks) in the same numbers as their Word and Excel counterparts:
Most businesses start using Word and Excel to manage their invoices because one day they need to bill a client and they have not prepared for it. The need almost comes out of the blue since it’s the nature of entrepreneurs to be more focused on doing interesting work and serving clients; billing is an afterthought. I once read that 3.5 million US businesses are using QuickBooks, and 6.5 million use Word/ Excel. So entrepreneurs use Word or Excel because those tools are there when the time comes to send that first invoice and they rarely look back…until the pain sets in.
What kind of pain do Word and Excel create in your billing process? First, invoice formatting is a pain and your documents don’t look great. Then there is the management of your files. Have you ever tried to track which of your invoices have been paid in Windows folders, or tried to tell how much an invoice was for by looking at files in a folder? Total nightmare.
I agree with the second part—those people are foolishly waiting for the shoe to drop.
Eventually they will need to fill out a tax form. Going to your accountant with a spreadsheet and no system is a waste of time and money. I suspect that whatever will come from Freshbooks will be a great tool. Why not transactional exports for Quickbooks and Simply Accounting right now?
Are you using Freshbooks or some other online application for billing or accounting such as QuickbooksOE? Let me know.
March 1st, 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:
February 27th, 2007
(Note: This post was originally composed as an open complaint in the Google Apps Google Group)
I have taken the plunge into attempting to use Google Apps. I have even gone so far as to try out the Premiere Edition. My experience thus far has been less than ideal.
I originally thought that it would be great to be able to manage and handle all my business tasks via Google’s new Apps service but I have been sorely let down.
I have been using the Google personal pages for almost a year now with my Gmail account and love seeing my Gmail and Google reader stuff there as widgets. I thought wow. I could have my domain email work the same way and do it all under my domain email so I signed up.
Here Are the Problems So Far
I Haven’t been able to get the email to work. I have a CPanel based host and the MX Record doesn’t seem to want to change. (Host also has Edit DNS disabled in my reseller WHM account so I can’t change the MX records there even if I wanted to.)
Where Are Contacts in Calendar
I can’t figure out what genius didn’t think it would be a good idea to integrate Contacts with the Google Calendar in Apps. Sharing contacts is not enough. You want to be able to set appointments with them as well. (On the same note, we are given the opportunity [in the Premier Edition] to manage and schedule resources [just not humans])
Start Page is Not At All Like Personal Page
partnerpage/mydomain.com doesn’t work like google.com/ig! Why, I don’t know. But all I do know is that you can’t add any ig(personal page) specific widgets to the start page so my wish to be able to have my reader account work on the start page is all for not. It doesn’t make sense to have a bunch of RSS feed widgets when Google Reader works so well and you can see those feeds there. Put the damn Google Reader widget into partnerpages/mydomain.com. Now!
Standard Google Links Don’t Work Right
Mail, Calendar and other links at the top left of the Apps applications lead to the standard google applications and if you are signed out and try to click mail and sign in you get a nice message that states that, “You can’t login to GMail using your Google Account…” (paraphrased)
Migrating Email = Abandoning Your Old Messages
It appears that it is impossible to import email messages into Gmail for Google Apps. It was, at one time possible with a hack to import messages into standard GMail but why Google wouldn’t think that this might come in handy for someone to use when “migrating” to GMail for Google Apps is beyond me. It should be really called “abandoning your old email” vs. migration if you can’t import your messages.
Peer Support is Not Enough
Help and support seems to be sparse for such a new application. I know it is new but it should have been planned from day one, that the Google Apps Google Group should be manned by people who actually work on the project and have enough people here that questions get answered–no matter how basic. I see far too many threads in this Group that are dead or ignored. For a new application the experienced user group just doesn’t exist–you can’t just expect peer support to work out of the gate. The majority of people in the Google Apps Group are early adopters, the people who, if given the right direction and support will enable them to support others. (Though, I suspect most will just give up or leave based on the current scene)
Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
What I was looking for was an tightly integrated, enhanced, domain version of what I already have with my Google/GMail account. What I have signed up for is a mess of half finished parts being taped together as they go and not a word as to what the shape might end up as.
Questions Still Remain
Will I be able to Scehudule with Contacts?
Use Google Reader and Analytics under my apps account?
Can Import my email messages without a hack?
Will Real Googlers pipe in on this group, en masse, to let us know that it will all eventually work?
Have You Tried the Switch?
Update: Here is someone who has.
February 27th, 2007
After finishing Malcolm Gladwell’s amazing book, The Tipping Point
, I decided to take another stab at Michael E. Gerber’s E-Myth Mastery. I have gotten to the chapter entitled, “The Discipline of The Enterprise Leader”, and the something resonated with me this time that hadn’t before—Michael’s idea that discrimination will set a leader apart.
All too often, small business owners find themselves caught up in the minutiae and trivia of everyday work activities and spend equal amounts of energy and time on tasks that have vastly different values in relation to the goals or vision of the business. Discrimination and learning to do it actively is an important lesson to take hold of. Allowing ourselves to quickly decide whether activity is of high value or low value and focusing on the high value will, I am sure, move you more quickly to toward your end.
My exercise for the next week is to discriminate and evaluate everything in relation to my vision.
What can you do next week to move you to make your business become truly world class?
February 3rd, 2007
A while ago–okay a long while ago–I posted about my search for a desktop Feed Reader application. I thought I should give an update since the situation has changed.
New Years and a Hard Drive Failure Brought the Winds of Change
Beginning in the new year, after the release of IE7 and FeedReader’s latest version (3.07 at the time), I noticed a significant performance slowdown with FeedReader. It was taking painful amounts of time to load posts and render them for reading as well as their being a change to the interface. Since I read on average 50-100 posts each day it was taking longer and longer to do this in FeedReader and eventually I gave up. I stopped reading and stopped getting current and new information on the fields that I crave information on.
My New Solution
My new solution is Google Reader. I had at one time decided that hosted feed readers were too slow and not as convenient as using a desktop client but after my problems with FeedReader my hunger for my feeds returned and I remembered that Google Reader was part of my Google Account features and decided to give it a whirl.
Faster and Functional
Whirl it does! Not only can I read posts faster, I now have the ability to tag them, forward, star and save them. Google Reader is not only fast but an all around great application. And, if I have another hard drive failure, I don’t need to worry about losing or having to somehow restore the desktop client database (who knows how tricky that might be). I now spend far less time reading many more posts and can send posts of interest off to friends.
Getting Even More From Google
One further enhancement has been to use a Google Gadget to display my GMail, GoogleReader and Calendar all on my Customized Google Page so I have that set as my “Home” page in FireFox and I never am more than a click away from an excellent control panel.
The next step?
I am likely going to move my domain email (via Google Apps) to GMail so that I can read, manage and post all messages using GMail instead of using my local email client, Thunderbird. Again, if another hard drive failure comes my way and I can’t recover my email messages, I won’t be stuck seeking old copies etc.
On a related note: Yesterday I talked about my quest for an Integrated, Hosted Contact Management System.
February 2nd, 2007
[UPDATE 1: I want to offer a special welcome to those of your from the Freshbooks forums. Thanks to VortexPortal for the link.]
[UPDATE 2: 37Signals has announced the release of its Contact Management Tool formerly known as Sunrise—now Highrise. You can read my first impressions on it or the announcement from 37Signals.]
After a stupid (and refreshing) hard drive failure on my main computer, I lost lots of data and emails etc. I was using SugarCRM as a solution for contacts. It is open-source, and therefore free, but not without issues.
I had it installed locally on my box instead of on my webserver because I was just one person (then). Now that it is gone due to a corrupted backup disk I am searching for a new solution.
Initially, I thought about reinstalling SugarCRM, but this time on my webserver. I cringe at the thought of going through the install process as well as dealing with the inherent lack of perfomance on my server. My host server is not a high performance system. It is an inexpensive shared server meant to host small websites with little traffic and so burdening myself with questionable speed in managing my contacts, appointments and lead tracking is just bad business.
The Search for a New CRM Solution
I started searching for options this morning with an awareness of some hosted and installed applications: The installed I have tried and left are vTiger and SugarCRM. Neither did what I needed and both did way more than I would, could ever need. There are a number of hosted services for the really small business , like mine and I have signed up for ZohoCRM and BigContacts but neither seem to do what I want.
The big problem is that I already use some hosted applications such as Gmail, Freshbooks and Basecamp, GoogleReader, and GoogleWriter and to a small extent, GoogleCalendar and none of these comfortably coexist. What I want is a applications that work together.
Personally, I think that Google going in the right direction with Google Calendar and GMail. I love the speed and flow of working in the Google interfaces but Google doesn’t look at the two and say, “Lets mesh these into a compact, fast and lightweight CRM solution for Small Business. I am not an application developer, but I think it would be relatively easy to take the next step and allow more robust contact management and event scheduling.
If I could log in to GMail and lookup a contact and see notes, tasks, meetings, calls with that individual, schedule such activities in the future, assign categories, and link documents, I would give up localized contact management and my desktop email app forever.
Google Apps are Fast Enough for Every Day Use
The reason? Google apps are fast and user friendly, period. Last week I became frustrated with my desktop feedreader and decided to give GoogleReader a try and wow! It is immeasurably faster than FeedReader. GMail is equally fast and effective at managing my emails and after playing with GoogleWriter, I can see the possibility of using hosted apps for most everything. I just need to see this missing app–the integrated CRM for small business.
Integrated CRM is Missing
Yes, I said it was missing. What about ZOHO and BigContacts? Well, they are both limited, ZOHO is a linear application that requires page reloads for every think you click on. BigContacts is limited for a number of reasons: it is not really doing CRM but contact management and calendaring. Where it does win is speed. It is build using AJAX (for good) which makes it fast and desktop-like. When you click on a link something immediately happens without a page reload–this is what Google is doing already. BigContacts suffers from the inability to create repeating activities. If you have a meeting every Tuesday at 4:00PM, you are going to need to schedule this manually. So much for the “management” side.
That being said, almost all of the CRM applications I have tried, don’t do this correctly. Many of the meetings and calls I do as a consultant are weekly or bi-weekly and who wants to have to spend time to add all these appointments. Both ACT! and Outlook have done this for years but I guess the hosted and installed application developers think that this is not important.
Sundown on 37Signals’ CRM Solution?
I came upon this article about Basecamp creators 37Signals coming out with a hosted CRM called Sunrise HighRise back in the first half of 2006 and have found nary a word about it since the middle of ‘06 about it. I don’t know if this is because 37Signals had objectives shift after their cash injection from Jeff Bezos? I like the way BaseCamp and Writeboard work so I would love to test their idea of a CRM but alas it is nowhere to be found (although, it is reportedly being used in house at 37S).
Google is Closest to the Finish Line. Are They in The Race?
I think, based on my experience, Google has the shortest path to successfully launching a CRM application because they already have the pieces of the puzzle and the proven performance to make it mainstream. If 37Signals ever comes out with Sunrise Highrise, it may be a fierce application, and a significant tool for all small business.
One final note: If I found that all this could work for me in an integrated fashion, I would be willing to pay for it–it just has to work!
What are you using? What features are you missing?
February 1st, 2007
I have been reading 37Signals new eBook Getting Real in which they talk about the problems with large committees and project teams etc. in development. It really came clear to me tonight when I read Seth’s post on That iPod Video which lead me to the iPod Observer story that Microsoft Confirms it Originated iPod Box Parody Video.
The iPod Observer Story cites a Microsoft spokesman, Tom Pilla as confirming they commissioned the video, “…to humorously highlight the challenges we have faced RE: packaging…”
In Getting Real, the 37signals team talk about developing faster applications and better interfaces and working through each process by being smaller and not having to cater to every VP or Chief “Insert Title Here” in the organization. Obviously Steve Jobs gets this and Microsoft acknowledges their design-by-organization methodology is flawed but still need to get there.
Small teams are always better than committees.
I will keep posting until I get through this terrific eBook.
PS: A minor irritation is that it is not available in print and I am loathe to print it out as inkjet cartridges are not cheap.
March 14th, 2006
