About one month ago I got the news from a customer of nearly 8 years that they were leaving us and GoldMine for Salesforce. Needless to say, I was rather disappointed. It was some consolation that they told us that they loved First Direct and the decision was not a reflection on us. We were still both sad to lose the relationship!
I wanted to know why the switch. They told me they were disgruntled with GoldMine because it is archaic in some ways. So they looked at moving to Salesforce, in the belief that it would give them the ability to better interact with other systems. But after making the decision to switch to Salesforce they started to rethink it. While there were definitely attractive features, it was daunting in technical terms. According to Mike Secondino, IT Manager, they realized that they prefer the fact that can have both the desktop interface and still access GM over the web. Something that Salesforce does not offer. “While we initially thought moving out of GoldMine would be the way forward, we have decided the way forward is to go back and make better use of the new GoldMine and its web interface.” Mike Secondino, Lowry Research Corporation (15 User GoldMine Premium Edition).
As far as I’m concerned, none of the CRM products are perfect. Each have their pros & cons. I tell prospects all the time that they can be successful or fail with many of the options on the market. And success is far more about best practices and the commitment your firm makes to the product it uses. GoldMine, for all its cons, still has a lot of pros!
Bob Ritter
President
First Direct Corp.
