As I've opined previously here and elsewhere, I believe that
inventory management is a critical element of making customers happy and
keeping businesses agile and competitive, especially in "the mobile, social cloud." One of the companies that I think
gets this better than most is Fishbowl, makers of the popular Fishbowl
Inventory solution. Well, in response to widespread customer requests, the
company has announced Fishbowl Pipeline Contact Manager.
It's Web-based, and it integrates directly with Fishbowl
Inventory 2012. So users of that solution can add Pipeline Contact Manager's
features immediately, with no re-entering of customer information required.
Sales people can track tasks, leads and opportunities seamlessly and get the
information they need to close deals in real time from anyplace they can get
online.
And not to get too geeky, but Fishbowl Pipeline Contact
Manager also supports an application programming interface (API) compliant with
the widely used Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). This technology forms the
heart of most of the popular Web services in use today, as well as their
abilities to interoperate. What all of that means is that Fishbowl Pipeline
Contact Manager not only works with Fishbowl Inventory but should be relatively
painless to integrate with other Web-based applications and services as your
business needs and goals expand. Think of it as a kind of
"future-proofing."
Superior customer care requires the ability to deliver what
the customer wants, when and where the customer wants it. By integrating core customer
relationship management (CRM) features with its market-leading Fishbowl
Inventory solution, Fishbowl is empowering companies with limited budgets and
IT expertise to deliver "enterprise-class" customer care and
fulfillment. And as it has done so successfully with Fishbowl Inventory,
Fishbowl is offering Pipeline Contact Manager at "SMB-friendly"
pricing.
Given the laser-like focus of Fishbowl management on helping
their customers to succeed, I fully expect Fishbowl Pipeline to become the
Fishbowl Inventory of CRM solutions. That is to say, an offering that rapidly
gains broad user adoption and high levels of user satisfaction.
