Barking

We already publish our roadmap of features - those that we are working on, and have already released; but we wanted to give you more say over what we do. After all, Tactile CRM is built for you.

We’ve set up a new page on the excellent Uservoice system (shown below) where you can add new feature requests and vote on those made by others. We’ll then take your suggestions to influence the way we develop Tactile CRM.

We’ll also give credit where credit is due. If you suggest a feature that we implement, we’ll give you an extra month for free (if you are on a paying plan) and give you a mention in the newsletter and blog post when we announce it.

When launching a new product, such as Tactile CRM, I have found there are two main areas that you need to work on. The first is obviously writing the software itself and the second is marketing that product and getting people to use/pay for it.

Tactile CRM has been live for a couple of months now and we are really pleased with the number of people signing up (we are currently on target for our projections). The main push now is twofold - development and sales/marketing - and more around the sales/marketing side of the application than the development.

Don’t get me wrong, Tactile CRM is an awesome piece of software from a technical/engineering perspective - it is really well built, easy to expand and add to, and the feedback we get from users is excellent. Obviously as Senokian we are comfortable with the development of an application like this as we do it on a regular basis for customers.

The new and unknown area for us however is the sales/marketing side of things. Adwords, and exhibitions/trade shows are easy to cost/plan, the difficult part is getting the buzz around the product - people and sites talking and discussing your application.

So far we have had a reasonable amount of success with our marketing, the graph below shows two decent spikes. The first was getting mentioned in the Amazon AWS newsletter, the second appearing on the new Google Solutions Marketplace. Both of these obviously drove a decent amount of traffic and sign ups to the site, however we need more people to talk about Tactile CRM.

Currently I am working on getting coverage on ReadWriteWeb and TechCrunch. Which brings me on to my current dilemma. Do we add new features we think are useful, or go for the bigger ones that are likely to get more press coverage (and still be useful in the long run).

I’m thinking things like the Google Contacts API integration we did - we were doing import work that people had asked for and at the same time Google launched the new API. As a result we were the first CRM system to implement it and a few people picked it up. ReadWriteWeb included us in an article on Socialprise and helped to drive more traffic to the site. This wasn’t a feature people request but one we added for PR purposes.

So the dilemma I now face is should the next set of features we add be for PR/marketing purposes or customers. I know the answer to this question when a product has reached critical mass is to add features for users but as we are not there yet, the PR/marketing drives the users and is the most important thing at the moment.

We’ve just pushed out an update to Tactile that brings with it some new functionality and improvements as a result of customer feedback, so keep it coming!

Both emails and notes on the Dashboard and when viewing things are collapsed initially but can be expanded by clicking the “Show More” link.

For Clients, Leads and People the default ‘index’ view is to show those you have recently viewed. This should be more useful than the previous alphabetical view but, if you do still want to just browse through all your contacts, the “A-Z” option is there just below the page title.

You will also notice that for Clients and Leads the “town/city” and “county/state” parts of the address on the index pages are now links. Clicking them will filter the list to show just those entries that are in the same location so you can, for example, find all of your clients in “Coventry” or in “Devon” really easily - if you’re planning on visiting someone, you can take a look at who is nearby and perhaps drop in and say hi!

It’s now even easier to keep on top of your Activities, as they can be marked as Complete right from the Dashboard so no excuses not to keep on top of things!

As always, feedback on features (both new and old) is much appreciated, we have added a few extra areas to the forums where you can make them.

Lots of people write about launching a new web application from different perspectives/view points and at Senokian we are no different; with the pending launch of Tactile CRM (you can sign up with the code APPROVED) we are going to write about the various promotion, pitfalls and successes that we achieve over the launch of our new product.

We hope that this will add to some of the excellent writing that is already available (such as Bare Naked App) and add another useful perspective to those that are thinking of building/launching an application.

We have launched the new website for the Tactile CRM. If you are interested, feel free to sign up (you will need to use the case sensitive code APPROVED) to try the free beta.

Please sign up and let us have any feedback you may have on the system.

Tactile is our new product based upon our award winning Open Source EGS software.

What is Tactile?

A web-based CRM product, Tactile is aimed at businesses looking to easily manage their customer contacts, opportunities, activities and sales team. Using Tactile you can easily manage the interactions and sales processes that various teams within your organisations are involved in. Tactile offers:

• Clients - organisations you work with
• Leads - organisations you would like to work with or are currently negotiating new work with
• People - the all important people who work within the organisations
• Contact Details - addresses, phone/fax/mobile numbers, email addresses
• Opportunities - easily track new or exisiting sales opportunities with clients and leads
• Activities - manage your day to day activities on clients, leads, people or opportunities
• Notes - store, track and manage information on clients, leads, people, opportunities and activities
• Sales Pipelines and Reports - graphical dashboard with graphs and pipelines to easily see what is going on
• and much more…

The Plan

Over the next few weeks we will be releasing previews of Tactile and are looking for people to join our private beta.

The Previews

10 previews, 4 weeks. Each preview will reveal a little more about the product, its structure and how you can use it.

Can’t Wait?

Sign-up for our private beta by emailing beta@tactilecrm.com - help shape a new software product with your ideas and feedback, and be first to use one of the hottest new products.

There are a limited number of spaces so apply now to avoid disapointment and don’t worry if you don’t make it first time, we will be opening more places on a weekly basis to people during the beta/preview period.

Interested? If you could include the following in your email it will greatly increase your chances of making it onto the beta:

• Name
• Email address
• Company name (if applicable)
• A brief description of why you think you would be a good beta user

As a thank you to all of those joining the beta we will be giving away a free three month pass to all beta users after the trial has finished. In addition to that, those who make an outstanding contribution on the beta will be given an extension to the free trial above the first three months and entered into our prize draw to win a special prize!