omelett.es journalThe journal of team omelett.es //

What’s Resolve RM I hear you say! And you’d be right to ask as we’ve kept it under the radar for a while.

Resolve RM is the third product we have launched (alongside Tactile CRM and Spend Meter) and is designed to help small businesses manage customer complaints/requests. It integrates seamlessly with Tactile CRM and it’s the first step towards a simple VRM (vendor relationship management) tool.

Check out the screenshot below, and drop us an email if you’d like to join the beta.

Great news – we’re pleased to announce the new integration of FreshBooks with Tactile CRM has just got even better. All you need to do is enter your FreshBooks API key and you’ll be on your way to viewing customer invoices directly in Tactile CRM and sending new customer details to FreshBooks when you win new deals.

To make it even easier we’ve put together a quick video (about 3 and a half minutes), showing how easy it is to setup and use:

So, the details in full – from Tactile CRM you can now:

• Import FreshBooks clients
• View Invoices for your clients
• Automatic syncronisation of invoices
• Add organisations and people directly to FreshBooks without leaving Tactile CRM

But that’s not all! The nice folks over the pond at FreshBooks have given us the handy promotional code ‘tactile09′ which you can use to get $20 off your FreshBooks account.

Keep it handy and when you decide to upgrade your account with them just enter it in the promotional code box. Don’t delay though, it expires on the 1 October 2009 and it will probably come around faster than you think!

This is our first stage integration with FreshBooks. There are some other things we’re going to add, somethings we’d like to add when they update their API, and somethings we’d love for you to suggest! Just drop on by our feedback forums and tell us what we can do to improve [FreshBooks +] Tactile CRM and we’ll get straight on it.

I don’t often ‘Google‘ for our own software product, but since launching the new site I’ve been checking a few pages to see how we are doing – imagine my surprise when I found a competitor ‘passing off’ as us for our own name!

(Yes there is a free trial of Tactile CRM, you can sign up on our site for it.)

Imitation is supposed to be the highest form of flattery and I realise that competitor’s products will appear in search results and as adwords on Google for general terms, but when the ad text misleads people into thinking that they are clicking through to our product I think it’s a bit below the line.

With phrases such as ‘Free Tactile CRM Trial’ and ‘Tactile CRM has never been better’ (that last one is technically true – the new release is awesome and we’ve had loads of positive feedback) I believe the ads are wrong and misleading.

Check out a couple of the other offending ads below:

That’s right, Tactile CRM has never been better – check out the new version on our site.

Of course Tactile CRM integrates with Outlook, infact if you check out our site you’ll see how Tactile CRM integrates with all email clients!

If you feel inclined, and want to up their adwords bill, feel free to visit the Google page and click on their advert! If you want the real Tactile CRM though visit our website.

A big thanks to Steve Tuck, he had a similar problem and pointed me in the right direction for the Google Trademark complaint procedure (as did James Burke).

I’m really please to announce that Tactile CRM has been selected to represent UK web innovation abroad on the UKTI sponsored Web Mission.

We will be spending an intensive week in San Francisco networking, arranging meetings and attending the expo. If you’d like to meet up whilst we’re there get in touch and we’ll try and fit something in!

I’ll be in San Fransisco from 28 March to 3 April 2009 so if you would like to catch up with me to discuss Tactile CRM, Spend Meter, or our latest product Resolve RM (or anything else for that matter!), drop me an email to jake [at] omelett dot es and I’ll sort something out.

It’s part of a UKTI trade mission and is designed to help UK companies focusing on enterprise applications better equip themselves for business in the States (I have already been on one previously to NYC that was incredible useful and I’m off to SXSW too) we’re delighted to have been accepted on the Web Mission and we hope you’ll see the benefits of it in the coming months.

Photo Credit: Benjamin Rossen.

If you’ve visited the Tactile CRM website recently (and it wasn’t your first visit), you will have noticed that it looked a little different! We’ve taken the opportunity to give it a refresh alongside the new version of Tactile CRM that we have just released.

The old site was looking tired and it didn’t reflect what Tactile CRM could do. We’ve got a load of new testimonials (drop me an email to jake [at] tactilecrm dot com if you are interested in being included), new video content and hopefully an all round better site.

That’s not the end though, we’re going to be making some tweaks and changes over the coming months using what is known as A/B split testing (we try making small changes, record the difference in signups and make a decision based on that – if you want a really dull in-depth explanation, check out wikipedia) to see how we can increase the sign up and conversion rates to make sure even more people benefit from Tactile CRM.

As always, your comments thoughts, feedback and suggestions are gratefully received.

We’re pleased to announce the new version of Tactile CRM (our CRM sales tool) – there is a lot of stuff in it so we’ve called it version 3. Included in the new version is:

• The new interface/UI
• Increase in plan limits
• Updated FreshBooks Integration
• Opportunity Archiving
• Improved Dropbox
• Opportunity Export

Keep an eye on the blog for more information about these new features!

It’s simple really – just like Tactile CRM – use one of our Business, Premier or Enterprise plans and we’re now including unlimited opportunities!

This is not a one time offer or something we’re going to change – we see opportunities as being a key feature in Tactile CRM, after all they are what makes your organisation money.

It’s really easy to take advantage of this upgrade – if you are already on a Business, Premier, or Enterprise plan you don’t need to do anything, we’ve already made the changes to your account. If you’re not, sign up or change your account in the admin area of Tactile CRM and the changes will be applied straight away.

Photo Credit: Unhindered by Talent

The new version of Tactile CRM has a brand new interface – you can see some examples of it and this is what the new version looks like:

What I wanted to take a look at was some of the new UI features we have added (above tidying it up and making it look prettier) that add new functionality.

Quick Add

One of the key new features is the ‘Quick Add’ tab that allows you to quickly add a new item from any page within Tactile CRM

We had a lot of feedback from users that if you were working on something (such as adding a note or viewing a person), then needed to add something, you had to use ‘two mouse clicks’ to get to the add screen.

This is quite a common usage pattern within Tactile CRM so we’ve added a new tab that uses some nifty javascript to display the options when you move your mouse over it.

Now all you need is one click and you are there.

Custom Views

We’ve added the ability to customise your view of data (on the dashboard for example) and choose to restrict how you view your data. The screen shot below shows how you can easily choose which organisations you want to see:

We decided showing this on the screen the whole time was a pain and took up valuable screen real-estate. We’ve got over that by showing the current view and showing you the options when you move your mouse over it.

Pop Up Lightboxes

We’ve got some cool new integrations with other products – FreshBooks is there already, Campaign Monitor is in testing along with Hosted VOIP/Telephony integration. As a result we have the situation where it is useful to be able to send/receive data to those other systems.

We’ve started using lightboxes to display these forms to reduce page loads and allow you to work within the system in a more flowing/natural way.

These are just a few of the more obvious additions and many have been lead by user suggestions. We take all the feedback we receive seriously so check out feedback forums if you want to influence Tactile CRM!

The last couple of days have been about tidying my data. Google released their calendar and address book sync over the weekend and I found a great app to sync FaceBook profile pictures with address book contacts (on the mac).

There are currently some limitations with Google Sync (mainly the number of calendars that you can sync – this is an Apple issue not Google), but it’s a great solution to keep you calendar up to date without having to go back to you computer to sync subscribed calendars. With this I can now keep up to date with my diary and see the events colleagues who use Tactile CRM add for me.

• Google Calendar Sync (iPhone)
• Facebook/Address Book Sync (thanks to @mikebutcher)

As always, we’d love to hear ideas and suggestions from you – just drop us an email to links [at] omelett.es with any interesting stuff and we’ll take a look.

As part of the updates to the new Tactile CRM website and interface I am in the process of redesigning our newsletters. We use the excellent Campaign Monitor to send them, but they also have some really good resources when it comes to designing them:

• What I learned redesigning the Campaign Monitor newsletter
• Email design guidelines – Campaign Monitor

As always, we’d love to hear ideas and suggestions from you – just drop us an email to links [at] omelett.es with any interesting stuff and we’ll take a look.