Publish or Perish
Information Management Systems

What is CRM?

Customer Relationship Management is a technology-driven business tool designed to reduce costs and increase profitability. CRM goes hand in hand with Sales Automation (SA) towards streamlining your business.

A CRM/SA system can help your organization achieve excellence by:

1. Measuring performance indicators to help your sales team pursue the best quality leads.
2. Allowing team members to manage more business with less effort by automating tedious tasks.
3. Maintaining detailed information on your customers to eliminate the possibility of deals slipping through the cracks.
4. Helping you provide informed customer support.
5. Closing the loop to provide incremental sales to your best prospects - your existing customers.

The software keeps track of all the interactions your company has with its clients. For example: it maintains a list of the client’s contact information, an inventory of all the quotes, invoices, and emails your employees have exchanged with the client, as well as a register of all the phone calls and other interactions your company has had with the client. CRM makes all this information readily available to your employees at the click of a button - making it very easy to keep track of customer information.

In addition, CRM software provides a standard framework for pushing leads through a sales pipeline and sharing tasks amongst many different people. It can also automate many of the daily responsibilities performed by your marketing sales and customer service divisions. All this makes your company more efficient and effective.

Publish or Perish specializes in creating comprehensive CRM systems using the Ivanti suite of products and many other applications.

Most companies can benefit from some form of CRM but not everyone needs an elaborate or expensive system. In our experience, GoldMine and related products are usually the most versatile, powerful, and affordable CRM solutions for small to mid-sized companies. However, don’t just take our word for it. Give us a call and we’ll schedule a free demo for you. We also hold regular informational seminars on GoldMine.

If you would like to find out more about CRM, please, feel free to give us a call or contact us via email.

Why work with Publish or Perish?

1. We have 15 years of experience working with CRM
2. We provide free consultation and needs analysis
3. Our pricing is fair and straightforward
4. Honesty is our policy. We will never try to sell you something you don’t need
5. We provide excellent tech support

What is included in our support contracts?

1. Quick response times
2. Low hourly rates
3. Priority tech support
4. Easy statements for your accounting

Why choose GoldMine?

Nearly every business can benefit from the automation and standardization of their sales, marketing, and other business processes. This is what CRM is all about. But the right CRM solution has to be easily deployable, customizable, and most of all, affordable.

GoldMine is easy to use, right out of the box without any prior training. However, the program is also extremely sophisticated and customizable. It integrates well with most other software packages and can be configured to accommodate almost any business model. It is also considerably cheaper than most of its competitor products once the cost of configuration and training are figured in (see below for more details).

So, on balance GoldMine fulfills all of the requirements of a CRM solution more effectively than any other program out there which is why we here at Publish or Perish have chosen to make GoldMine our primary piece of business solutions software.

How do I get started building a CRM system for my company?

Find what your "pain points" are within your sales process - picture what the ideal flow of information and steps would be, from contacting your prospects initially, to automatically stepping through sales process, to earning their business and converting them to customers, to

You want to be in your ideal situation, but you must be able to describe your current process. Where in your current process is information lost or garbled, or where do stress levels rise?

Take a quick inventory of your current computer assets and how your sales team works - is everyone hard-wired to a central server working in the same building, or are some (or all) of the sales team working remotely? How is information shared amongst team members? Should everyone see the same information?

Our talented team at Publish or Perish can help you design and improve your sales strategy and process flow.

GoldMine vs. ACT! Which is Better?

The main differences between ACT! and GoldMine arise from the products’ very different origins. ACT! was originally conceived as a standalone application ideal for a single salesperson working in isolation. GoldMine on the other hand was developed from the outset as a workgroup collaboration tool. This heritage is still at the core of both products.

ACT! has a stylish interface and some people find it easier to use out of the box. However, many people who start out with ACT! end up switching to GoldMine because they have reached the limits of the program’s capabilities - too many records, too many users, poor synchronization, lack of the arsenal of powerful third-party add-ons and plug-ins available to GoldMine users, no SQL hosted version for further expansion.

If you just need a snazzier, digitalized daily-planner with which to manage your information as a Salesperson then ACT! may be all you need. But GoldMine should be your first choice if you expect that you will need to share information and intelligence with other members of your team or integrate your contact information with a wide variety of other programs.

GoldMine vs. Salesforce.com: Is a Hosted Solution a Better Solution?

In a word... no. Salesforce.com may very well be an excellent solution for your business model but it is not the silver-bullet, magical, one-stop solution it claims to be. There are a number of problems with remotely hosted CRM solutions in general and with Salesforce.com in particular.

1. Price - Salesforce.com provides access to CRM tools for a low monthly fee starting at $65 per user per month. This may seem attractive when compared to the hundreds of dollars that need to be invested to get a user up and running on a networked version of GoldMine. However, GoldMine is a fully functioning product that only requires a one-time investment. There are no monthly fees associated with GoldMine and nearly all CRM users will save money in the long-run by choosing GoldMine over Salesforce.com. In the vast majority of cases, savings are realized within the first year of operation
2. Flexibility and Customization - Salesforce.com is not very flexible or customizable, whereas GoldMine can be configured to your exact needs.
3. Web-based Access - Browser-based access to your information from anywhere in the world is one of Salesforce.com’s strongest selling points. What they don’t tell you is that for a one-time licensing fee of iGoldMine your GoldMine system can also be browser enabled for on-line access anywhere in the world.
4. Servers - With GoldMine, you alone determine when and where your critical contact information can be accessed.

If you ever choose to move to some other type of CRM service in what form will your data be downloaded and transferred? How is the data organized? How will it be loaded into the new system? These are things that businesses should evaluate before sending their critical data to an offsite location.