Thursday, February 9, 2012

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.