Being Nimble in a Social Selling World
Rating: 9 out of 10
January 24, 2015
CS
Vetted Review
1 year of experience
Nimble is used by the organization to handle leads, future advocates, existing advocates. The entire organization is using it. This CRM solution is dealing with the challenge of keeping track of and pulling into one view all the social signals and streams of people and organizations we provide services and solutions today. And, the more it is utilized the better it becomes for it's intended purpose. I believe that ideally this is likely one of the best social intelligence tools for organizations with simple CRM needs.
- This CRM tool allows us to save a tremendous amount of time in data entry. On any web browser or email client communication via Google (and soon other clients), we have the means to quickly add users into the system, view all their pertinent social media streams, enter notes, to do's, follow ups, schedule meetings, all without going into the actual Nimble solution. It's awesome!
- The integration with other systems is powerful. Integration to systems such as email marketing solutions, marketing automation like ACT-On (via cazoomi), and financial accounting systems like QuickBooks is a big time saver for a small organization.
- The Nimble System has an integrated email inbox where you can capture and communicate back with every email which comes in without leaving the tool.
- With it's Nimble Contact Widget automatically fills out the contact record from just a name and email. It's automagic—Saves time. Recently, the company launched the Nimble contact widget for Google Chrome, Hootsuite, Safari and Firefox. It's an awesome new feature.The Smart Contact add in is awesome! The ease of getting a contact record into the system on any website (LinkedIn, Twitter, or company websites) is 2nd to none. Not only are you able to get information into the system quickly there, but even in Gmail. Beyond the data entry efficiencies, with Nimble you can immediately connect the dots in terms of what the contact likes,dislikes, follows etc. with it's ability to pull in all the social intelligence via their digital footprint. From there, you are on your way to developing stronger relationships.
- On the main dashboard, we can view all the "engagement" opportunities we have with contacts who have "followed" us or otherwise had some interaction so that we don't miss enhancing our relationship opportunities. In short, from one view we can listen and respond in one CRM tool!
Cons
- Reports: Opportunity Management and/or Forecasting is an area of improvement. In June, we had a major improvement for reports and sales forecasting. This was a major step in the right direction.
- Import: The Import process is cumbersome. I have used many import tools and while this is not the worst it's mediocre at best. The key is having an implementation partner or using someone on the App Market to import your initial data such as demographic or profile information from your legacy system like Goldmine, ACCESS etc. If all your data is in Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, GMAIL contacts it's no problem. We just had specific fields which needed to be pulled in twice for "contact" and "accounts" linked information. For example, Revenue was a field we captured at the contact level and account level. We wanted to see that information in both places. As a result, we had to import twice due to the lack of linkage right now. I am sure it will get improved but not that good now. It can be overcome and not that expensive to do it once you get the process down.
- Templates: There are no standard word templates which can be used to send out regular communications without going out to a third party system like MailChimp. In other words, when you have follow up emails which are routine to check in you have to copy and paste those type of "word" or "google docs" templates into the Inbox of Nimble to send out accordingly. There is a work around but if you are using some other CRM tools this is something to be aware of in your evaluation process.
- Account Management: Many tools have ways by which to "link" shared "data" between accounts and contacts. For example, XYZ company has 3 or more employees. When you input information you would like the address to "flow" down to others. Or, you have a shared "field" on the contact record but would like to have it also displayed on the "account record". There is no way to do that. Therefore, be mindful of that situation. If you work with company records, it's a bit cumbersome to deal with this right now (as of 1/1/2015).