I’ve been testing out “Highrise,” a 37 signals web site dedicated to tracking your contacts with customers/vendors.
Highrise is a very simple “CRM” (Customer Relationship Manager) system. I think Salesforce.com is a more “complete” solution, but I believe Highrise is intentionally simple, for people who aren’t doing any kind of CRM and need a basic tool that will give you 80% of the benefit for 20% of the work.
I’ve been surprised; by using Highrise I’ve been able to learn quite a bit about our vendors. I have the contact information for a half-dozen people at our reporting tool’s company. I know the last time I made contact with any given contractor. I can tag the people who’ve helped me understand ITIL.
I’ve also been surprised at how much I interact with vendors; I can easily log a dozen Highrise contacts a day. (I’m using Highrise whenever I contact anyone outside the University.)
The user interface is simple and straightforward. I asked 37 signals if Highrise could be purchased annually, rather than monthly, and they said no. I like the concept behind Highrise and many of the other 37 signals products: the tools will do what they were designed to do, and hopefully that’s what you need. If you want something different, that’s fine, but 37 signals will not accomodate you: they have a defined service with defined parameters and (to use ITIL v3 terms) they are happy to provide an excellent warranty of service for the service’s narrow utility.