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nemanirc · May 23, 2005, 08:56 AM

The latest posts on this topic were a few years old, so I thought I'd find out what people are using today. I currently have a little FileMaker Pro database I made myself (I am a psychologist, not a programmer) to manage my prospects and am ready to move to a commercial package that gives me more functions. A lot of the sales I do for my consulting (visit my web site Nemanick.com) involves mailings and phone calls. I currenlty keep my call to-dos in Omni Outliner because it lets me keep little notes on the calls in its notes fields. I would like a program that prompts me to make calls when I haven't called someone in a while, keep track of contact attempts (so I know when I last left a message), and records of conversations.

I have only started looking (DayLite seemed like the only thing out there with the kind of sophistication I am seeking) and was hoping someone had an opinion. I take it that Act! and GoldMine are not available for the Mac and don't have anything on the horizon.

schuey100 · May 23, 2005, 03:40 PM

Goldmine isn't available directly on the Mac. However when we were looking for solutions we looked at the two major ones, Goldmine and SalesLogix.

IMO SalesLogix was the better option. The best way of running it on the Mac is to buy a PC server and run it of that. You can then access it via the web browser. We decided that all in all, for 10 licences it was too expensive. They also told us that they couldn't guarantee support on the Mac platform so that was a no go.

We also looked at Daylite but I disliked their sales guy and when we demoed the App it seemed to crash a bit and just wasn't sophisticated enough for our needs. We used their old version a few years ago and there were just too many problems.

We then looked at salesforce.com and a couple of other hosted solutions. These are great as they're entirely web based and relatively cheap (at first) The one thing I didn't like about them was that they're not customizable enough. Actually, I also didn't like having to wait for the screen to refresh to change things.

So, in the end we decided to build our own relational database in Filemaker. We've had it running for about a week now. It's excellent. We're very happy but I was lucky to have a guy that is pretty good at this kind of design already working for us.

Our work is similar to yours. We had the same needs and found that, in the end, FM was the best solution. We have also programmed in the ability to do a selection in FM and click a button and for those people to be emailed. We have a few other things built in that have really made it a great sales tool. It looks nothing like the standard FM databases you see. It's pretty advanced.

It's easy to do reporting, tracking, follow up sales calls etc etc. The best thing is that we created it to work in the way we wanted it to work. If you like, (and if it's possible) I could let you have a look at it to see what can be done. I'm also sure that our database guy could knock something similar up for you for a small fee. He could put something together for you that exactly meets your needs. If you like, drop me an email and I can either give you a few pointers, discuss what we found with the other solutions you mentioned or put you in touch with our database guy.

email me at mschumacher@ the domain below

olapreport.com

schuey100 · May 23, 2005, 03:50 PM

Oh, there was one that we didn't look at which has had some good reviews. It's another hosted service:

http://www.netsuite.com/portal/products/main.shtml

MaxPower · May 23, 2005, 04:24 PM

On a side note, please stay as far away from Goldmine as possible. You would not be inaccurate likening it to feces. It is a horrendous ball of code that is nasty to work with, let alone customize. I second the roll-your-own approach.

Kristoff · May 23, 2005, 04:44 PM

I concur.....Goldmine is SHITE.

CatOne · May 24, 2005, 12:35 PM

Originally Posted by nemanirc

The latest posts on this topic were a few years old, so I thought I'd find out what people are using today. I currently have a little FileMaker Pro database I made myself (I am a psychologist, not a programmer) to manage my prospects and am ready to move to a commercial package that gives me more functions. A lot of the sales I do for my consulting (visit my web site Nemanick.com) involves mailings and phone calls. I currenlty keep my call to-dos in Omni Outliner because it lets me keep little notes on the calls in its notes fields. I would like a program that prompts me to make calls when I haven't called someone in a while, keep track of contact attempts (so I know when I last left a message), and records of conversations.

I have only started looking (DayLite seemed like the only thing out there with the kind of sophistication I am seeking) and was hoping someone had an opinion. I take it that Act! and GoldMine are not available for the Mac and don't have anything on the horizon.

I've used DayLite for about a year. It works quite well for this. And it's very good at small (say ~10 people) workgroups, and with its online/offline synchronization. Absolutely worth an eval.

altimac · Aug 24, 2005, 12:41 PM

You should try OD4Contact from Objective-Decision, we work a lot on the UI, and i think we "leave Daylite in the dust" on that point

Much more modern and OS X Friendly (Bonjour, Bluetooth, Mail.app integration since day one etc...)

Hope you'll like it !

moonmonkey · Aug 25, 2005, 05:11 AM

what about a web based one like salesforce.com?

KenDallas · Aug 25, 2005, 09:49 PM

I am also looking for a good contact management / CRM software for the Mac. I have switched from the PC environment recently and have been successful in finding all the software replacements for the PC with contact management being the exception. I had been using ACT on windows for a good number of years and it was great. I agree with the general consensus on Goldmine, I never was a big fan.

Has anyone on here tried Now Up-to-Date and Contact? I have heard good things about it but have not yet tried it. Was wondering if anyone with experience with this particular piece of software had some insights to share with the rest of us.

Regards,
Ken.

altimac · Aug 30, 2005, 03:09 PM

My opinion may be biased, but i find Now Contact & Up to Date a little bit old school, its not a great port from the OS 7 days. The interface items are huge.
And it is retarded because it lacks many modern features like devices dialing (Ovolab, skype etc...), Bluetooth cell phones, great iChat integration, Apple Mail integration and Bonjour services...

You should really try OD4Contact which is clearly taking market share to the old leaders !