The search for the best CRM / Project Management software (Why we chose Insightly)

Posted by Erik Rudling on February 8, 2011 in Google Apps, Project Management | 2 comments

Read the first post in this series called “Why we didn’t choose Project Place”

Read the second post in this series called “Why we didn’t choose Manymoon”

If you’ve read the previous articles in this series you know that Project Place and Manymoon have been tried and turned down. The exciting finale is upon us and I will now tell you why we finally chose the Google Apps application Insightly to handle our opportunities, projects, customers and much more.

The search for the best CRM / Project Management software (Why we didn’t choose Manymoon)

Posted by Erik Rudling on January 29, 2011 in Google Apps, Project Management | 4 comments

Continuing from part 1 “Why we didn’t choose project place”.

After scrapping Project Place I swiftly moved on to Manymoon. A cloudBasically it means that you are working of someone elses server, it's not a new concept, but it's boomed in recent years (09-10). It is now very popular in media and with different retailers trying to cash in on the actual word, not the concept. Google has a big part in pushing development forward with their Google Docs and Google Apps services forcing Microsoft and other big companies to tag along. based project manager with alot of neat integration features with Google Apps making it possible to add documents from your Google Docs to your Manymoon projects and tasks. You can also add your tasks as events to Google Calendar.

I had visited Manymoon a couple of years ago before trying out Project Place and I must say that after having tried the later I liked Manymoon more. Where Project Place felt a bit bloated and slow, Manymoon was a bit more fluent plus it had more possibilities and more ambitions when it came to Google Docs integration.

The first issues I bumped into was when digging in to the user interface a bit more and experiencing the whole work process, it felt cluttered and unorganized. I had no issues in dealing with this, since having experience with many different types of software you learn to work around issues and ignore them if you know that the developers are not prioritizing this.

But keep in mind that I have colleagues that I have to introduce to this software and I have a very limited time to do so. They are used to the whole Microsoft Outlook look (I said look twice! uh, thrice) and they know how that works, they are comfortable in that environment. In this case for them, the change was bad.

I tried on several occasions to introduce Manymoon, but in the end there were just too many options; too much to do; too many buttons and too many text links combined with these buttons. Manymoon seem to have an aspiration to introduce social media like (read FacebookA social network which leans more towards the private life of people when compared to business oriented networks such as LinkedIn.) features and interaction into their application. Even though I really like that aspect, in their case it hurts them more than it helps them. It contributes to the clutter and hurts the useful CRMCustomer Relationsship Management is an area where alot of companies need help. It defines the way you use different technology and software to interact with your customers and clients. One of the areas where I work in and constantly look for improvement in both software and in educating people.-side of the application.

There was also some confusion going on with the different levels when entering projects where the menu changes, confusing the user with new layouts and buttons and no obvious way back to the main menu. We could not continue with Manymoon.

My complaints aside Manymoon is very popular and has recieved good ratings on the Google Apps Marketplace, so give it a spin if you wish, perhaps you’ll befriend the interface more than we did. Also worth a mention is that Manymoon has just been aquired by Salesforce.com which might mean that they put more energy (read money and time) into improving their user interface. A big step for them nonetheless and I congratulate them on the success!

Coming up is my conclusion in the search for the best CRMCustomer Relationsship Management is an area where alot of companies need help. It defines the way you use different technology and software to interact with your customers and clients. One of the areas where I work in and constantly look for improvement in both software and in educating people. / Project Manager for me and my colleagues.

Read the final post in the series called “Why we chose insightly”