Barking

So Tactile CRM didn’t get chosen for Web Mission 2008, but the list of those going is now up so best of luck to all of those involved, should be a really good event.

Does your current contact management/crm system leave something to be desired? After the initial launch of Tactile CRM we are currently working on the next set of features and would love to here any suggestions you may have to help make Tactile even better than it is.

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.

Wow, what a big milestone - Tactile CRM is now live and all of our payment engine etc. is in place for people to sign up to Tactile CRM. I’ll write a bit more about it soon, as you can imagine we have a lot to do at the moment with the launch but check back for more news.

As a new Make Your Mark Connector I have been taking a look through some of the various bits and pieces that they do/are involved in and came across a fairly timely event that could be very useful in the Launch of Tactile CRM - Web Mission 2008.

As press and e-coverage is key to the success of Tactile CRM these sort of events can be key to getting in-front of the right people to help you not only promote your application but also gain valuable feedback on the application itself and gain further ideas on how to take your product to market.

I have dutifully sent a submission to be considered and we will see how we get on in the process.

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.

I had a chance to chat with Chris yesterday about Tactile and what we are planning to do, he has written a great article (the first in their new beta section) on the @bar website about Tactile CRM. Check out the app and what he has to say.

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.

The Tactile CRM private beta is now underway and we have already had a good number of people sign up. For those of you that would still like to join in, visit the Tactile CRM website and follow the instructions there.Today’s post is the first preview of the new system that beta testers are using online and will hopefully begin to let people see how Tactile will be of use to them.

1. The top left hand side of the Tactile system tells you which company you are logged into (Demo in this screenshot) and gives you easy navigation to the modules within:
   • Your Dashboard - an easy overview of everything going on within the system
   • Clients - Organisations with which you have a working relationship
   • Leads - Organisations you are currently talking with
   • People - Contacts within Clients & Leads
   • Opportunities - Potential, Won & Lost sales opportunities
   • Activities - Things you need to do
2. The main area of the screen (with the white background) is where all the key information regarding what you are looking at is kept. In this case it is a client and is Senokian Solutions Ltd. You can also easily tag clients from here to make searching easier.
3. For those of you with several members of your team we also show you who added the client and when it was last updated. This helps easily identify who last made changes etc.
4. Clients can have as many bits of contact information as you like (Phone, Fax & Email Addresses) and we display them to the right of the page. They can also be edited and added from here and as with all of the boxes of information you can open and close them to ensure you are not overloaded with unnecessary information. For example, your tech team may not be interested in the opportunities with this particular client so closes those off to make it easier to find the information in which they are interested - contact details and notes.
5. Address details are also readily visible so these can easily be pulled off without cluttering the screen.
6. Notes - this area of the page shows you all of the notes related to the client including those pulled through from people, activities and opportunities
7. Notes - a note shows you what it is attached to, who wrote it and when it was last updated. Notes also have a title and are a darker shade of yellow if they were written by you. You can edit and delete your own notes and view everyone elses.
8. The client information allows you to store further information about the client, from account number and credit limit through to website and number of employees. In addition to these standard fields all of the fields in the right hand column (Status, Source, Classification, Rating, Industry & Type) can be setup and configured by the admin account to allow you to customise Tactile to your needs.

More to Come

• Tags
• Inline editing
• Leads, People, Opportunities, Activities
• The Dashboard

Sorry for the delay in posting - what with the summer holidays and the build up for the Tactile beta, time has been at a premium!

For those of you interested in the Tactile beta, we are just sending out details for the first round of the beta for those who have already signed up. If you haven’t we are still looking for people to join.

What we are looking for though is people that use Outlook! We want your CSV files (and for you to join the beta too). Basically we want your Outlook CSV files to test out import routine - please email me if you are interested in helping out - all data sent will be treated confidentially.