Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I have used Goldmine for five years and find it to be invaluable for managing contacts and projects for my consulting business.
Best Features:
#1) Organization Charts can be created that can include other organizations as a subset. This is the feature that I utilize the most and don't know of any other product that has this capability. To manage projects, I include vendors that I have contacted under the client organization chart that they support, yet can tie them to other clients as well and maintain their own independent org charts.
#2) All phone calls are logged under my contacts as are emails. You can file relevant documents such as Word and Excel documents under a contact also but this is not a feature that I make use of.
#3) There is sales forecasting feature that I've worked with that is another important capabiity but I'm not taking full advantage of that yet.
Other Comments:
Another reveiwer found the syncronization and learning curve to be a problem. I was syncing Goldmine with my Palm Pilot and it was a two step process - first syncing to Outlook and then another step to sync to the Palm. I have stopped using this feature as I'm generally in the field and didn't have the cradle available for the Palm. I'm looking at using a smartphone as my PDA that has a USB connection, so I expect to go back to syncing. The two-step process is inconvenient but like other workarounds with technology, I've gotten use to it. Goldmine definitely has a learning curve but there are a lot of features and is a very powerful program, so I expect that.
Tip:
I recently started to keep four quadrants open in the program at all times: 1) Contact Records, 2) Calendar, 3) Contact Search Center, and 4) E-mail Center. I read about this technique and it greatly speeds up my use of the application.
Things Goldmine Could Do Better:
#1) I would like to see a To Do List similar to Franklin Planner method whereby you could assign priorities along with the suspense date that you want them to show up on instead showing future items before they are needed.
#2) Have a more flexible method of showing more phone numbers under a contact - I have contacts with multiple work numbers (as they work at multiple locations), two cell phones (work and personal), home phone, fax numbers (work and home)and the list goes on. As I recall, ACT does a better job at handling this issue but I find Goldmine's other features to offset this.
I totally depend on this program to manage my contacts and feel that it is an ideal program for small businesses. While it isn't perfect, I can recommend that you seriously consider it. I give it four stars as while it is quite robust - it can benefit from further improvement.
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