Fishbowl Pipeline: A Big Step Closer to Consistent Customer Satisfaction in the Cloud

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.

Not that I have any strong feelings about any of this…but I obviously do. And if customer satisfaction matters to your company, and it does, you should, too. And you should check out Fishbowl's solutions and ways of doing business. Drop'em an e-mail at VIP@fishbowlinventories.com. I think you'll be impressed and motivated to learn more.

Inventory Management and the Mobile, Social Cloud

I know, I know. "Inventory management" and "the mobile, social cloud" seem about as related as chalk and cheese. But hear me out (or whatever the literal equivalent is for readers of my blog).

It turns out that how well you manage inventories of the things customers buy is often the prime determinant of how those customers perceive that business. It doesn't matter how appealing it is to do business with you if you don't have or can't find what I want in a timely fashion.

It also turns out that how well your business leverages information technology (IT) directly affects how well it manages inventory. And that if yours is like many if not most businesses, 60 to 80 percent of your IT budget is being spent just to keep what you've got working. Which doesn't leave much room for innovation. Or even improvement to critical business processes such as delivering what customers want in a timely fashion.

Meanwhile, your customers, partners, prospects, competitors and purchase influencers are all increasingly inhabitants of that mobile, social cloud. Which means your company has to be there too.

So what you and your company need is a way to free up more IT resources and to be able to channel more of these to the challenges of better infrastructure management.

Turns out cloud-based resources can help in both areas.

Cloud-based infrastructure management solutions and processes can help your company to automate and offload much of that stuff on which your company's spending most of its IT budget. This will free up dollars and human bandwidth to do other things.

And there are a growing range of premise-based, cloud-based and cloud-enabled inventory management solutions. You can find a great rundown of several of these in an article published by Inc. in May 2011. My favorite: Fishbowl Inventory. It integrates with Intuit's QuickBooks and offers options that can take a company from better inventory management to more and better sales, fulfillment and resource planning and management, as recently covered by eWeek.

Inventory management may sound boring, and often is boring when done manually or using traditional tools. But if you think about and act upon it as the business-critical performance metric it really is, and look to the cloud for help, inventory management could be the coolest challenge you take on in 2012 and beyond.

A Special Offer: If you're interested in Fishbowl Inventory, drop a line to vip@fishbowlinventory.com. I've negotiated a relationship with the company that guarantees that every one of my readers who uses that e-mail address will get priority treatment and help getting started with their free trial of the software. And if you promise to share your feedback with me for possible inclusion in future blog posts or research (anonymously if you prefer), you'll get undying gratitude from me -- AND a five-percent discount from Fishbowl if you purchase Fishbowl Inventory! A win for everybody!