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

Other services such as Last.fm, Yahoo Music and Groove Shark still offer unlimited listening services to their members for free.  Of course ads are played and displayed, but heck I don’t think anyone really minds.

I feel the music folks are strapping down the hatches for something that already is very successful in the UK and from what I’ve seen is going to be the killer music app once brought to North America.  Spotify is an application that reminds me of Apple iTunes.  The only difference is you don’t pay for the music you want to hear.  Of course you can purchase your own licensed copy of the music for burning, but Spotify offers a free service that has all the expected features and a low-cost option that allows you to sync your computer and mobile devices for playback even when there is no internet connection.

All I can personally say about Pandora is thank you for the great service over the years, but it may be time to give something else a shot.  So before you whip out that credit card, why not take a few moments to look at what other wonders the internet has to offer.