Customer relationship management (CRM) software is a confusing space. On the one hand, there’s been explosive growth of powerful cloud-based CRMs, especially for small businesses. That’s awesome. On the other hand, most CRMs you see are crap: they’re either overly complex, overly simple, or just plain annoying to use. Sorting the wheat from the chaff [...]
Tag Archives: Software as a service
Introducing… the “VM Approved” Award
As regular readers know, we review dozens of SaaS applications every month. Our intent? Finding the best the web has to offer, particularly for small to medium sized businesses. It’s our job to find the real gems, the applications and services that make business better. Hence today’s announcement: “VM Approved,” an award we’re handing [...]
Community feedback is good. Kinda.
In the good ‘ole days when software still need installing and executives regularly printed their emails, software “support” was a strange thing. Sure, Microsoft had helplines you could call, and Quicken came with a manual, but it wasn’t “support” per se: more like a robotic attempt to appease the odd granny or two. Software personified [...]
Expenses-R-Us: An interview with David Barrett, co-founder at Expensify
We really like Expensify and thought we’d share a recent interview we had with David Barrett, their co-founder and expensing extraordinaire. Here’s what he had to say… VM: Just to get readers familiar with Expensify, what’s your elevator pitch? What does Expensify offer that others don’t? DB: Expensify does “expense reports that don’t suck!’ We [...]
Nimble, new media and the SaaS revolution: an interview with Jon Ferrara
Recently we had the pleasant opportunity of interviewing Jon Ferrara, co-founder of the old-school GoldMine CRM platform, and founder of the upcoming Nimble, a social CRM. Check out his thoughts below. VM: Tell us a bit about your newest project, Nimble. What’s the pitch? JF: Just like with Goldmine, Nimble was inspired by a real [...]
SaaS Vendors Need To Figure The Channel Out Now
Referrals, Word of Mouth and Free Lunch Only Go So Far. In the young and emerging SMB sector, many SaaS vendors are turning to referral marketing as a way to spread the word. This “you win, I win” model means User A recommends the application, User B signs up, both get a 10% discount. For [...]
Working Point reviewed
Online accounting has long been a hot topic in the cloud community and it’s finally starting to bleed through to the mainstream. A recent survey by Bay Street Group reported over 75% of CPAs and accountants recognized they need to adopt new SaaS solutions, and 82% tie new tech adoption to client retention and growth (link [...]
The top 5 unknown reasons why business belongs in the cloud
There are plenty of “Top 5 lists” with generic reasons for why businesses should migrate into SaaS and cloud computing. Scalability, cost, mobility – they’re good reasons, sure, but we’ve heard them before: what else does cloud computing offer? If you’re thinking about moving your business into the cloud but haven’t yet, here are five [...]
Integration is a double-edged sword: API integration and why it’s not always the right way forward
Spend anytime among the cloud-computing crowd and you’ll soon find that API integration is a hot-topic. How friendly or unfriendly a given app’s API is, how many native integrations it has, the price-point at which API reference keys become available: all those factors are huge selling points for SaaS and a major consideration for would-be [...]
Nine upcoming Cloud Conferences worth checking out
Here at VM we’re planning our spring 2011 conference tour and we’re happy to say there’s a lot going on in the world of presentations and meetings about cloud-computing. Deadlines are fast-approaching though, so check out the list we’ve put together below and see if there’s something happening near you… hope to see you there! [...]