MyReMa CRM – Social Media Integration – First Look

Finally, I get to scoop Mashable on something! (smile). I had the opportunity to sit down this morning with Jeff Parrish, CEO & Founder, of MyReMa or……… My Relationship Manager. As Jeff explained it, MyReMa was born from the frustration that, while conventional CRM packages seem to focus on activities (email, opportunities, etc.) the current shift is more toward the person or contact themselves. Hence, while my MyReMa can be considered to be a CRM, it is more designed as an SNM. Say that real fast and don’t get too excited (smile). Wrong. Social Network Management. This is Social Media meets CRM.

What first struck me in looking at the product was how incredibly clean the interface was. Very simple and it would appear to be very logical in terms of navigation. MyReMa is designed to be simple. A lot of packages tout that but few seem to deliver. I have worked with a lot of CRM’s in my day and most have so many functions that you tend to only use those that are important to you and the others just seem to get in the way. MyReMa is designed to be modular. Pay for what you need. As an example, there may be an “opportunity” module that might include features like a “sales funnel” or “lead tracking”.  The basic package that I looked at included: Contacts, Calendars, Tasks, Email, and News Feeds. Let’s look at a few of those areas a little closer:

Contacts:

Here’s something I have not seen ….. MyReMa will not only allow you to import contacts from the standard mail services like Gmail and Yahoo……… how about LinkedIn and FaceBook as well? That, my friends, is something new at least to me. And, since we are talking about the integration of CRM and SM, it only makes sense. I suspect we will see Twitter added to that list. Google Wave was also mentioned. Outlook contacts can be imported thru exporting those to either LinkedIn or a web mail account and importing from there. EZ enough. You can also select what frequency you want my MyReMa to go out to these networks and update (import) new contacts automatically. For example…. daily or weekly. Each contact also features a “health meter” which is an indication of how complete that contact record is and how well you are working that relationship. Some fancy algorithm I am sure (smile).

Setting Google Apps As Default Mailer In Firefox 3

I use Google Apps Premier Edition for a variety of applications. Among these would be the interface required to use a Gmail hosted .com account for Salesforce.com integration. My iGoogle home page also shows my salesresults.com mail account. But there has always been one annoying thing that just drove me nuts……..when I am surfing the web and click on an email link, Firefox wants to use a @gmail.com account and then forces me to log into one. It took me a lot of time and a lot of visits to a lot of sites until I finally figured out how to add a Google Apps mailer application to Firefox 3. Most of the sites that I visited were very close but they all seemed to have something in common: where you should see an apostrophe (‘), instead their site shows a quote (“).  I finally got it to take on my desktop and tonight decided to set up my laptop the same way. Well, wouldn’t you know it, there was another step needed that I had never seen before. This was not an issue on my desktop, don’t ask me why, but was an issue on my laptop. Incidentally, I do run Vista on both. So, here it is, the definitive method to accomplish this task………..

Instructions for setting Google Apps to be your default mail account in Firefox 3:

Before you get started, please confirm that you have the latest edition of javascript, that it is enabled, and that your site can accept cookies. These settings can be accomplished in the options section of your Firefox browser. If you do not have Java, here’s a link. Java will also verify that you have the latest edition installed if you do already have it on your system.

In your browser address bar, type: About:config

Answer “yes” to “you will be careful”

In the filter bar on the screen type (or copy and paste): gecko.handlerService.allowRegisterFromDifferentHost

This will bring up the specific entry. Double click on the line to change the value from “false” to “true”

Do the same as the above, in the filter bar, for: network.protocol-handler.external.mailto

That last step was not necessary for my desktop but was for my laptop. Go figure (smile).

Go back to the browser address bar and copy and paste below. Be sure to change “yourdomain” to your actual domain name:

javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler(‘mailto’,'https://mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s’,'Google Apps’)

Hit return and a ribbon should pop up asking if you want to add this application to your mail. Say “yes”

Go to Firefox tools, options, applications, and select google apps as your default mailto

Return to about:config and return the two values to “false” from “true”

There, I have now accomplished two things. Hopefully somebody will find this to be of use and ……. I won’t forget how I did it (smile)

Thanks for visiting!

Craig

My New CRM – Salesforce.Com

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Yep, I did it. And, I’m doing it. Once I started working with this product I had to make it mine (smile). My original intention was to integrate with Outlook. As a reminder, I presently run two systems. One uses Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager and the other uses standalone versions of FreeCRM and Gmail. Now, Salesforce apparently has a pretty nice plug in for Outlook but my real need right now focuses on the other side of the business. It is important to note that Salesforce has a very cozy relationship with Google (Google might even use Salesforce) and so they provide some pretty nice integration tools in conjunction with Google Apps which I invested in last week for this specific purpose. I am going to run with those for now and maybe just convert everything over to Salesforce and Google.  And get this. I am not making this up. The user guide is 2,150 pages. I’m not sure yet if that is a plus or a minus (smile)? Here is what I have managed to figure out so far:

Contact Importing: I was able to import contacts from three different platforms (Outlook, FreeCRM, and Gmail) and Salesforce performed way above my expectations. It was simple, fast, and flawless. It also did an excellent job in managing and updating duplicate contacts. I am…a happy camper (smile).

User Interface: It was extremely easy to modify screens to my personal preferences. For me that meant arranging things in the order that I like to see them and use them most and it also means hiding the stuff that I have no interest in (at least for now). And, this sucker is blazing fast (smile).

A New CRM – The Contenders

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Disclaimer: This is going to be down, dirty, and fast (smile). I lacked the time, the knowledge, or the inclination to in-depth evaluations on any of these packages. On some, I didn’t even get past their home page (smile). What you are about to read should not be construed as any statement(s) of fact or otherwise. These are my perceptions only and are also based on input I received from others. I would strongly encourage you to evaluate each of these programs on your own. Or, call on an expert and that ain’t me (smile). Links to each can be found on my previous post….“Narrowing The Search”. I am separating these into two sections: Web based, AKA “SaaS” (software as a service) and “PC Based” and I know that there is a technical name for this but it escapes me (smile). P.S. I made the decision to stick with SaaS so did very little with PC Based packages.

PC Based:

Microsoft CRM 4.0: I am told that this is an excellent CRM and, being a Microsoft product, will integrate about as seamlessly as you can get with Outlook. However, it should be run on a dedicated PC which leaves me out. Here’s a hot tip. I was told that you can get a free Microsoft Live ID, register as a “partner”, and then buy “action packs for $299″  that includes 10 licenses. Sweet (smile)! Wish it would work for me.

Outlook 2007 w/t Business Contact Manager: The Outlook is great but the rest of this package is very very clunky. It acts like an afterthought or add-on which…it is (smile). Lot’s of steps to get where you are going. It automatically saves contacts that come in via email but, and this is a big but, it saves them to your personal Outlook Contact folder which is not much more than a rolodex. You have to manually transfer each contact to the BCM folder. If you use this, be sure to get the LinkedIn Toolbar for Outlook. The grab feature allows you to take an email signature and save directly to your BCM folder as a new contact record.

Google Tech Grab Bag

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When last I posted, I had just completed the purchase of a couple of .com names. Now that those were all set up and running, there was still a lot of work to be done……..

Google Apps: I honestly do not know exactly what this application does for the average user that you do not already get with plain old Google and Gmail. However, for what I am ultimately wanting to do, Google Apps is required because………..they tell me it is. Good enough for me (smile). Not only that, standard old free Google Apps is not going to cut it. I needed to buy the Premier version which is $50/year and comes with a 30 day free trial. Now, if I thought that setting up my domain names on GoDaddy was a pain….setting up Google Apps was a nightmare (smile). I should step back. I want to manage my email in Google rather than at GoDaddy which is why a lot of the challenges took place. You need to:

1. Have Google verify your domain name and…
2. Have Google verify your email address
3. Configure your domain to forward mail to Google

You would think this would just be a “yes”, “yes” and “yes” but nooooooooo….