As 37Signals is pushing for Highrise , its so called “CRM” initiative, I’m sure everyone must be thinking about, is it really a true CRM or just another personal data/contact/task management application combined with few CRM features. As per their blog
Highrise was built to satisfy common scenarios like:
- See all follow-ups scheduled for this week
- Review Susan’s notes before calling her contact at the printer
- Set a reminder to write Steve a thank-you note next Friday
- Review all conversations I’ve had with Chris from Apple
- Organize interview responses for potential candidates online
- See a list of all the designers your company has hired in the past
- Enter notes from a call with a potential client
- See all the people your company knows at The New York Times
- Schedule a follow-up sales call with Jim in 3 months
- Review all the people tagged “Leads 2006”
So they have proposed features like Leads, conversations, contacts which will fall into mini-CRM domain.
It also sounds like they are taking best of basecamp, campfire, backpack, Ta-Da List and collaborating them in a mini-CRM suite fashion. It would be interesting how this thing gets the wing, and by looking at their track record, I would not be surprised people getting hooked to it. Most of their applications are crisp ,intuitive and great usability. Bottom line gets your and your partner’s/customer’s job done. Last but not least the first popular “CRM” initiative for Ruby On Rails platform.