CRM Software Review: Highrise

Part of our job here at Make Way For Biz is to recommend and set up business software for clients.  We have analyzed literally dozens of hosted tools and narrowed our search down to a few favourites.

For client relations management, we really like Highrise by 37 Signals. But, instead of taking our word on how it can help you manage your client information, you are going to hear it straight from a small business owner.

We recommended Highrise to Andy Hayes of Travel Online Partners. After receiving daily OMG and I LOVE IT notes from him, we asked Andy to provide his review of this hosted CRM tool.

Why I Love Highrise

37 Signal’s Highrise has become the gold standard in the world of contact and customer management tools for small businesses and entrepreneurs – and for good reason. The tool is robust, feature-filled yet not scary or overwhelming support tool for any business that has a lot of customer contact. Here’s some thoughts and tips about why I love Highrise and why it’s now Make Way for Biz’s recommended CRM tool.

What Does It Do?

First, let’s cover the basics of what Highrise does. In essence, it is a:

• contact database, with ability to tag contacts with information such as how you met them, important dates, deals you’ve done with them, and tasks related to them
• deal tracking, to monitor and update all of your outgoing proposal work
• tasklist, which tells you what marketing-related tasks need done when
• “cases”, a flexible option for tracking customer support issues or queries

The whole system is web-based, so you can access it from any computer with an Internet connection. You can also share access with others by setting up multiple user profiles.

Highrise is priced on a tiered structure based on the type and amount of functionality you are using.

Why Do I Love It?

I love using Highrise because it keeps my marketing tasks and activities tightly structured, yet the system is flexible enough to accommodate the many types of project proposals I work with. Some specific points:

• The user experience and design of the tool is superb – it is probably a key differentiator, having seen other CRM tools. Navigation is swift and easy.
• The tasklist is very flexible, as you can choose to tag tasks to a week (i.e. “next week”), a specific day, or even just put “Later”. Highrise keeps in touch with you via email to ensure nothing slips past overdue.
• There is no fluff. Configuration is easy, and it has everything you need to track, without being bloated with bells and whistles nobody will ever use.

What’s Missing?

Highrise leaves little to be desired. The timezone feature isn’t always accurate when allocating tasks, and I’d love to see more options on the “Cases” feature so I could better understand how I might use it.

There’s also very little in the way of reports – for example, I’d like to be able to know the percentage of deals that we’ve won each quarter. Or create an excel spreadsheet of contacts to send Christmas cards to. Your data isn’t locked away in Highrise (at least your contacts, anyway) – but you can only export names in bulk.

Bottom Line

If you’re looking for a tool to structure your tasks and activities around your contact list and the related proposal work, then check out Highrise. It might just be perfect for what you need.

Andy Hayes is the Managing Director of Travel Online Partners  (TOP), the go to resource for small businesses looking for help with online technologies like websites, blogs, and social media.

For more information, read Eliza’s post on How to choose a business software tool.

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