The latest version of GoldMine, version 9.0 due out in June or July 2010, includes two major new capabilities: Dashboards and Outlook Integration. This article addresses the dashboards – Outlook integration may be discussed in a later post.
Sample GM 9.0 dashboard
The dashboards piece is aimed directly at those tempted by SalesForce.com, a “cloud” CRM system that touts its management-friendly interface as a major selling point. Because the decision-makers at many CRM-using enterprises are not necessarily the same people who use the system day-to-day, this was a canny move on the part of GoldMine to match what is often only a cosmetic advantage for SalesForce.com. Since GoldMine has some other clear advantages over SalesForce.com as a practical selling tool, we think the new dashboards will improve GoldMine’s competitiveness in the marketplace of small-to-medium sized business, and that’s a good thing.
So how does this new capability affect MasterMine users? Managers DO need to be able to get good information quickly and easily, and GoldMine 9.0’s new dashboards provide potentially a handful of new, useful views into GoldMine data that Management can use to “oversee” their GoldMine-based processes. By definition, a dashboard is a very high-level view of “what’s going on.” Our take is that this will merely whet Management’s appetite for more and better, more current, more flexibly presented information. A little good information begets more questions than it answers. Fortunately, MasterMine users can be the heroes that answer this need. Read More→