Stronger on Sales Automation than Client Management
June 29, 2018
Stronger on Sales Automation than Client Management
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Basic
Modules Used
- Insightly iOS / Android Mobile App
Overall Satisfaction with Insightly
I use it to manage contact lists and correspondence for my solo consulting firm. It's helped me keep track of leads. I've used it to manage projects and opportunities. I've also used some of the email marketing tools, including setting up some standard emails.
- I can tag any email correspondence when I'm using my local email to easily copy the correspondence to Insightly. This way I can look it up again within Insightly by the contact's name, company or email.
- Insightly provides many of the tools I need on one platform: CRM, and opportunity, task and project manager.
- It's easy to turn an opportunity into a project, so you don't have to copy over any past information or correspondence.
- The interface has become too complex, making it somewhat less intuitive to do even the simplest things, i.e., check off a completed task, only see open projects, read saved correspondence. This may be due to the fact that Insightly is trying to make it too customizable.
- Insightly seems to be moving more in the direction of a sales pipeline tool, rather than a simpler contact manager. This doesn't really fit the way I work, because my sales are not always linear in nature -- possibly because I'm selling services, not entirely fixed packages or physical goods.
- The project and task managers are too complex, and I can't organize easily by client. In other words, I'd like to be able to pull up a client and see all the tasks I need to complete for them. A dashboard would be very helpful for this.
- The current home dashboard isn't useful in that it only shows what's happened. This may be more useful for someone managing other people with Insightly. I'd like to see what needs to be done, not what's *been* done.
I originally signed up for Insightly for the CRM and project management capabilities, but I'm finding other tools to be easier and faster to manage by client. I was also hoping that I could simplify and automate some of my projects with the workflow -- that hasn't been easy to set up. So I'm not totally sure what outcomes I'm expecting at this point -- rather than getting easier to use, Insightly has become more complex. And new tools are being developed that seem so much simpler.
I moved from Batchbook about 3.5 years ago, because it had increased its price significantly. Insightly was a good fit with the bonus of the project manager. It was pretty simple to use back then, although it didn't really allow me to manage clients the way I wanted to. However, I stuck with it, purchasing an annual plan for a few years. I'm finding the sales management somewhat unnecessary and cumbersome, so I've been hunting around for other tools that have a more intuitive interface and better features in alignment with the way I work. They're noted above. Haven't decided which one to move to yet.