You can track the expected path of Hurricane Irene at CNN.com

Oracle CRM OnDemand offers a very robust CRM program that allows you to organize many types of business contacts, like sales prospects, accounts, and even your vendors, so that you are sure to be in contact with all of these very important people when needed. Oracle also allows you to schedule upcoming events, and log calls and events that happen to any lead or account. You can also add customized fields to Lead and Account pages, which helps when the appropriate field just doesn’t exist. The problem I find with Oracle is that as it is so robust that I don’t need the vast majority of the program, plus its expensive and requires at least a year contract. I am indeed wasting much of this Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) that is being paid for, much like man only using a small portion of the relatively large brain that God (or maybe Darwin) gave me.

Sometimes, simplicity is the key to success. 37 Signals offers me just what I need in a CRM tool called Highrise, in that it is smaller, with a more ‘fluid’ feel. Highrise offers easy to use tools and features that help all of its users, like the ability to upload all of your contacts. It doesn’t look to have any functionality that I don’t need or that I won’t use. It allows me to list several contacts for one business entity, and organizes conversations for each of those contacts… This is something that Oracle lacked. Another neat tool that I enjoy is the integration of outbound emails. Highrise allows me to log all of the emails I send very easily, which makes it easy to find ALL of my conversations with any one of my contacts. That leads to my favorite factor of Highrise; the ease of navigation. Highrise allows me to seamlessly flow from Person A at ABC Co. to Person B at ABC Co., and so on. Highrise is far less expensive than Oracle or Salesforce.com and in my opinion the perfect fit for many small to mid-sized businesses. Check it out, the folks at 37 Signals even offer a risk-free 30 day trial.

If you’re looking into a CRM program for your business, list the types of data that you want to save and log, and make sure you don’t pick a CRM tool that will be cumbersome. Your CRM tool should help you get information about any one of your contacts, deals, or vendors ASAP, keeping your business in motion!

Good luck in your search!
~Dan Shekleton

Here are some April Fools Day ideas (though we do not take responsibility for retaliation or disciplinary actions at work):

• Swap the signs for the men’s and women’s toilets at work – then stand back and admire your excellent toilet humour.
• Unplug a co-workers mouse and then watch them struggle to figure out what happened for several minutes.
• Mix Tang in the office coffee pot once brewed.
• Poke some small holes in the paper water cups, so that next person that gets a drink of water will have some bonus sprinkles.
• Make cat food sandwiches and put them in the fridge. See what happens.
• Tell everyone but your target to bring a couple of changes of clothes to work. Then walk by your target with a different set of clothes on every time.

Thanks to Discoverfun.com and Metro.co.uk for some great ideas.

Just remember April Fools Day was intended to be fun, not harmful so be a good sport.

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