Goldmine

M

moises

0
I run a small business. Goldmine was installed before I became involved with this business. We have version 5.5 and we use it predominantly to manage leads/prospects. Once a prospect becomes a customer, we stop using Goldmine.

Goldmine is used heavily by my two Sales Representatives and lightly by four Customer Service Representatives.

Two people involved in purchasing use it lightly/moderately to maintain a separate database with vendor information.

It is vastly underutilized considering how much we pay for it. No one uses it for scheduling or task management. I'd be happy to maintain the status quo but I fear that our version is so old, at some point we will not be able to upgrade. So I will probably upgrade in the next few months.

Given that I will be upgrading, I am curious how others use it for calendars, tasks, scheduling etc. Do you synch with Outlook? Do you use it for GTD?
 
Goldmine

Awesome!! You are one of a very few who are into GTD and who use Goldmine (or at least one of a few who has come out and admitted).

Goldmine is robust, can be customized, and has some very powerful features that automate many tasks (called automated processes in GM, or ap's). To me, it seems to be a great fit with GTD...and in fact, one of the activities that you can schedule is actually called a "next action".

Goldmine also has a very active community, as can be witnessed at the forums: http://forums.frontrange.com/

Can sync with Outlook with the sync engine that is included, although you can customize that syncing much more with CompanionLink.

I would love to hear how others (if you are out there) use it with GTD as well. I am the only one in my office that uses it (I bought it myself at my previous company, and brought it with me here). What is usually recommended is that you use a "Solutions Partner" to customize it, but since I'm the only one that uses it, I've never invested in customizing, other than what I've done myself.

Ryan
 
Have you used Goldmine's Project Manager?

I'm looking for a new CRM solution. (We've been using Intuit's Customer Manager.) The candidates seem to be Act, Microsoft's BCM (with perhaps an eventual migration to Microsoft Dynamic's CRM), Avidian's Prophet, and Goldmine. One thing that intrigues me about Goldmine is the possibilty of using Goldmine's Project Management feature for production scheduling. Applications such as MS Project are overkill, but something that's linked to the CRM data and can keep tabs on the status and progress of jobs as they move through the production cycle could be very useful. Can Goldmine users out there tell me if this is practical? or more trouble than it's worth?
 
Goldmine & Projects

Yes, Goldmine does have a utility to manage projects. However, depending on how in-depth you need it to be, it may come up short. I've never used that feature, as I don't operate in a project-type environment.

To get the real skinny on it, post your question on the Goldmine forum at the Frontrange website.

Ryan
 
Goldmine & GTD

Since last posting in this newsgroup concerning Goldmine and GTD I have been quite busy trying to find some sort of solution. I think I finally have one...not as elegant, technical, or sophisticated as I once envisioned it...
but it works for me.
It's really quite simple.
I create Goldmine forms (Word docs) that I put in the personalized "outlook' style menus on the left. When a contact comes in that I need to follow up on...
I just click on the form.. update the info...and print it. Then put it in one of my 43 folders. This form is pretty much a straight next actions type list.

If its a sales oriented contact (a customer I've sold)... the form automatically calculates the following FOLLOW UP dates:
1 day - 3 days - 7 days - 14 days - 31 days - 60/120/240/365. If I happen to 'miss' a followup on the 3rd day... I take the two seconds it requires to decide if I'm going to move them to the 7th day date... or call them NOW.
The form contains an area for 'next actions' that I can use if they give me a task that takes them out of the normal 'follow up' schedule. Once the task is done... I can look at the next date and throw it in the correct 43 folder.
The form has some of the fields and topics of discussion suggested by "Swimming With The Sharks" and always gives me something to talk about when I'm 'just calling to see how things are". I can enter the info into GM if I think it's valuable...and forget about it if I don't.
My next step is to work on the contact sync with GM. My DB has too many contacts in it to work 'comfortably' with a sync.
I don't really have the time to enter all the 'next actions' into my calander...
anyway... that's my story and I'm stickin to it.
What about you Moises... Ryan... any tips on how you use GM and GTD?
 
Hey, whatever works...

You are right, that's not sophisticated, but if it works, I wouldn't change a thing.

I simply use the "Activity List" in Goldmine to work off of. It can be filtered, printed, manipulated in many ways. You just schedule an activity (call, appointment, next action, etc) against a contact. It then appears on the activity list, and depending on your settings, can appear on your calendar.

I understand where you are coming from when you have an actual hard copy...sometimes it's nice to have something physical to look at and take with you, and to be able to scribble notes on.

Ryan
 
Yeah... I know about those... I've been using Goldmine since around 1996. The way I found out about GM was by writing an article comparing what was at that time "Contact Managers" for a group of newspapers. My original copy came in from FrontRange for eval purposes. I compared it to about 8 others including Act, Outlook, Max something or other...etc.

I've used the next action feature, until the actions because so backed up that I couldn't keep it current.
So... how do you use the 'context' concept in GM?
Do you print out the reports (probably customized) every day? and use that as a list?
Or do you check them off while logged in at GM?
Are you using automated processes, scripts, web imports, etc???
How many are in your company?

Thanks...
 
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