The objective is to teach the new users of this project management software how to use it and also to  give insights about ProWorkflow´s features and usability. In this article you will find video tutorials on the following topics:

1. Introduction for New Users
2. New Client User
3. Getting Started – Client
4. New Company
5. New Project
6. New Staff User

1- Introduction for New Users

2- New Client User

3- Getting Started – Client

4- New Company

5- New Project

6- New Staff User

You can also compare ProWorkflow with similar products and read more articles about ProWorkflow and related topics.

Planning a Budgeting Software

A thirteen-year-old product, PlanGuru was initially built to help CPAs model financial projections for their clients. “The time and inaccuracy of creating formulas in spreadsheets led PlanGuru’s founders to develop an accurate and flexible solution,” says Tripp Graham, Director of Marketing at the company. Subsequently, the company has improved it’s usability for other customers, including entrepreneurs, small businesses, nonprofits, and large corporations.

The design starting point for the solution was Excel’s complicated setup. “Developing and maintaining multiple spreadsheets in Excel is painfully time-consuming and can be error prone,” says Graham. So, the solution’s developers aimed for simplicity, integration, and automation. With PlanGuru, you can import your chart of accounts then choose from 20 inbuilt forecasting methods to project your budgets over a ten-year period.

This also frees up time for financial professionals to focus on the more important parts of their business. “Because PlanGuru alleviates the painful aspects of budgeting (such as correcting faulty Excel sheets), these professionals can now spend more time drawing insights from their projections,” says Graham.

According to him, future plans for the solution include more robust analytics and reporting features. “While the core PlanGuru application is a solving tool, PlanGuru analytics will allow users to draw deeper insight into the forecasted financial statements they have created in the application,” he says.

Working With PlanGuru

In its simplest form, PlanGuru is an integrated set of financial statements and associated analyses. The statements (and analyses) are enclosed in a format that is similar to an Excel Workbook. The statements help you budget and forecast analysis. You can budget for up to ten years in advance. However, granular planning is only available at the quarterly and monthly level.

As I mentioned earlier, the solution automates several associated components of budgeting and forecasting. For example, the statement of cash flows is updated automatically, once you update budget and income statements. Similarly, the solution offers you a choice of 20 different forecasting methods (with multiple sub-options).

The PlanGuru setup is fairly easy and involves constructing (or, uploading) tables to create a chart of accounts. PlanGuru already has several account groupings under which you can enter line items. However, if you are unsure about groupings, you can simply add expenses by line items. Automation is, again, an overriding theme in maintaining and forecasting your line items: the system automatically calculates budget ratios and makes rolling forecasts for you.

The Basics: What Does The Interface Look Like?

The interface is fairly similar to Microsoft Excel. Although it is not Excel based, it adopts a similar cell- and grid-based approach. The design was a conscious choice, according to Graham. “Our users were more comfortable viewing their budgeted/forecasted numbers in a spreadsheet-like format,” he says.

Pros & Cons

Perhaps, the tool’s greatest benefit lies in its ability to automate and simplify complex budgeting and forecasting practices. That it does this without the help of messy and unwieldy excel sheets is fantastic. PlanGuru also provides comprehensive analysis for your line items. For example, modeling techniques enable you to accrue expenses or declare dividends in multiple formats.

Finally, there is an added side benefit to the tool. For someone who does not understand financial statements, I thought the solution did a neat job of simplifying accounting for me. This can be an especially important benefit for entrepreneurs. For example, they can create custom accounting line items to track their expenses and balance books. “The one role nobody wants to play is auditor of their own spreadsheet models,” says Graham. He says PlanGuru helps businesses starting out by automating this task and preparing them for a number of contingencies.

One area where PlanGuru could improve is in its interface. The solution’s interface, which is similar to Excel, helps business transition quickly and easily to PlanGuru. However, it does not mark a significant improvement over the Excel interface. I think a SaaS paradigm offers great scope for users to interact with software in new and innovating formats. Improving the interface (by reducing the number of cells, adding color, or automating more financial transactions) will help simplify PlanGuru further.

Pricing

PlanGuru has interesting pricing models that encompass multiple formats. Thus, the PlanGuru Cloud Hosting plan enables you to purchase a license and host it in a private cloud. The Lease PlanGuru in the “cloud plan” enables you to lease a PlanGuru license in the cloud on a per-month basis. Both plans enable you to access the application from anywhere. Finally, you can also purchase a traditional PlanGuru on-premise desktop or network license, if security is your biggest concern.

The Bottom Line

Yes. With a diverse array of features and its ability to simplify complex budgets and forecasts, which can be customized to fit a wide variety of businesses, PlanGuru is a winner all the way.

Ratings:  ease of use 4/5, features 5/5, value 5/5 and ease of deployment 4/5

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In this Datafield review, I plan to evaluate the platform. I’ll be paying close attention to the web-based platform’s data collection and surveying tools, and I’ll be looking at how those tools can be implemented by small businesses and professionals in the retail, sales, auditing, construction, real estate, exhibition, government, advertising, insurance, and legal industries.

About Datafield

Datafield unshackles its users from the restraints imposed on them by more traditional methods of paper-based data collection, and gives business owners and managers a way to involve stakeholders in their everyday workplace decisions. Business professionals can create mobile surveys that are instantly formatted for smartphone users, allowing them to collect data and opinions from anyone, anywhere, in real-time. The Datafield mobile application is available on Android, iPhone and iPad.

Surveys can be prepared from scratch or using one of Datafield’s templates, and forms can be composed using any combination of open-ended question and multiple-choice answers. Surveys can also be designed to include questions that involve media rich content, GPS location information, and photos. Responses are received by the form creator in real-time, and they can be segmented by the respondent’s location, profile, photos, or other useful factors.

Main Functionality of Datafield

Busy professionals can use Datafield to prepare mobile surveys, collect internal information, manage remote teams, and gather the results of the data they’ve collected. What truly makes Datafield innovative and unique is the platform’s mobile angle. The surveys and polls that users design can all be launched on smartphone devices, giving users the freedom to collect information from respondents who aren’t necessarily inside the office or sitting in front of a desktop computer. No internet connection is even required with their advanced offline mode.

After preparing a mobile survey — composed of several questions, and possibly protected by password to prevent responses from unauthorized participants — a user can publish his campaign at will. Surveys designed for corporate use should be dispatched to specific field agents via email, while surveys designed for public use should be made available to anyone who has been given access to a company’s survey tag.

The results that a Datafield user collects are available immediately upon deployment of a survey. In addition to collecting text data, which can easily be extracted as a .csv file, users can also collect photos, GPS locations, and other personalized information to better understand responses from survey participants.

Benefits of Using Datafield

Datafield offers businesses an innovative way to collect opinions and data from employees, customers, and stakeholders located in-person or across the globe. The web-based platform is useful not just for creating surveys and polls, but as a way to keep a close eye on remote operations, manage internal audits, and conduct investigations into offsite operations. Not only can companies ask smartphone respondents for text responses, but they can also use Datafield to collect photographic evidence. This is especially useful in mystery shopping expeditions.

Businesses that use Datafield for public polls are more likely to collect a high number of responses, in part because the polls and mobile surveys designed with Datafield are actually fun to take. Participants can respond to any surveys they’ve been sent using Datafield’s mobile app. Research has shown that response rates increase when businesses make it easy for participants to take part, and Datafield’s interactive mobile app publishes surveys in a way that is both stylish and accessible.

Retailers have also reportedly been using Datafield as a registration tool, giving them a chance to collect customers email at check-in and customer’s feedback at check-out, thanks to their appealing smiley question.

The Basics: What Does the Interface Look Like?

Click the “Create a new form” button to start designing your first mobile survey. Give the survey a title, and then start adding questions. With Datafield, you can ask questions in multiple formats, including single choice, multiple choice, text, date, and yes/no. You can also get panel information from respondents, allowing you to segment responses by gender or location.

When you’re done designing your survey, it’s time to launch your mobile campaign. Chose whether to make the survey public or corporate (i.e, private), and enter a start and end date for collecting information. Once you’ve launched a public campaign, anyone with your tag will be able to access your survey or poll using Datafield’s mobile application.

Manage your campaign from the Datafield dashboard page, keeping track of the number of responses you’ve gathered in real-time. Replies can be segmented based on certain filters, like gender or location. You can also decide whether to edit, modify, duplicate, delete, or stop your survey before the pre-determined end time.

Support Information

Detailed information about Datafield’s functionality is available through Datafield’s FAQ page. Datafield also publishes an informative blog with additional information about mobility as well as useful tutorial and screencasts.

Pricing Information

Datafield offers pay-as-you-go pricing, making it easy for business users to quit the platform at will. Pricing ranges from free (for up to five mobile surveys per month, with 20 MB of storage space) to $199 (for up to 50 surveys per month, with 10 GB of storage space). All plans come with an unlimited number of mobile users.

The Bottom Line

Datafield is an excellent platform, and it offers users a reliable, effective way to collect all different types of business information. By utilizing mobile technology for data collection, companies are able to gather secondary information (like GPS location, for example) in addition to the answers to any text-based or media rich questions they’re asking participants. Any information that’s collected through Datafield is available in real-time, and poll creators have the option to extend any survey they’ve published in an effort to collect even more responses before the final deadline.

Ratings: ease of use 4/5, features 5/5, value 5/5 and ease of deployment 4/5

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Having a professional online service like BambooHR that can take the weight and the stress off a small business that either has a small HR department or no HR department at all.  With help from an online service like BambooHR, HR managers have more time for meaningful work: to create a rewarding culture; to provide accurate executive reports with the click of a button; to anticipate employee milestones; to give managers role-specific access that ensures personnel information is confidential and secure; to enable employees to self-service their time off; and to proactively respond to compliance guidelines, which vary from state to state and country to country.

Upshot – having a professional online service that automates daily HR tasks is a lifesaver for many entrepreneurs and start-ups.

This BambooHR review highlights how this “in the cloud” HR management service specializes in helping small businesses with all of their HR needs.

About BambooHR

As Ben Peterson, CEO of BambooHR, says, “BambooHR is the most successful way for small and mid-sized businesses to go from spreadsheets or paper to automated HR software. Our goal is offer unmatched service and free people up to do their work.”

The five-year-old company fulfills its purpose by helping businesses streamline their many HR needs from hiring, to tracking benefits (including 401Ks), training, boosting employee morale, and much more. The solution can either be an adjunct to a professional HR department or it can help a smaller company that has an informal HR staff access professional HR tools.

 What Does it Look Like

The BambooHR interface is relatively easy to follow.  The ribbon at the top of the screen helps the users easily navigate through the solution:  My Info, Dashboard, Employees, Reports, Files and Tools — all of these tabs allow the user to conduct and view various tasks and information.  Of course like any HR solution, depending on whether you are a manager, VP or employee – your access to certain proprietary information (i.e.: salaries, hiring dates, etc.) will be different depending on rank and role and Bamboo HR can help a company set that up.

They also offer an easy way to customize the layout of the app.

What´s New from BambooHR

We reviewed BambooHR a year and a half ago and gave the solution a good review – as we felt the BambooHR was a solid, robust, affordable and easy to learn solution for small businesses.  We are updating the review as in the past year or so, Bamboo’s product and business model have improved.

New Features of BambooHR

Five Languages - Now BambooHR serves customers in more than 70 countries and is available in five new languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, German, French/Canadian, and Dutch. This allows not only companies residing in those regions to use their language of origin, but it also expands Bamboo’s international reach.

Single Sign On (SSO): Along with multiple API and webhook enhancements, BambooHR has added Single Sign-On, so you do not have to constantly enter your password every time you log on; instead you can simply sign on with your Google account login or through your company’s intranet portal and other applications.

New Partners – Let’s face it, any good service simply cannot be good at EVERYTHING. Most applications whether they are HR, CRM or project management will have additional partners to provide more in-depth services. Now BambooHR offers integration opportunities at no extra charge to many partners that specialize in different aspects of HR, including payroll, applicant tracking, background checks, and more.

Mobile Application - Now employees and managers can view critical information right from their mobile device. Through BambooHR’s native mobile iOS and Android app, employees and managers can make and approve time off, see PTO balances and access their company directory right from their mobile device. This is important as many people today are working in the field, working from home, or traveling. Having this data on a smartphone or tablet makes life much easier.

Main Tools and Features of BambooHR

Dashboard - Each Bamboo user – whether an employee or administrator — will see their own customized dashboard. BambooHR dashboards will depict an individual’s vacation days and other personal information.  The dashboard is also where users can post company-wide information – earnings reports, upcoming employee off-sites, new product releases, etc.  There are widgets that offer up this information and users can customize their dashboard by dropping and dragging information in the dashboard in a way that is easy for the user to view.

Employees -  BambooHR makes it easy to add and update employee-related information all in one tab. Also in the employee tab is where a company can populate an employee directory.  A nifty feature is hitting the S on your keyboard, which will take you directly to the search box so you can look up various colleagues.  Also in the employee section you can customize your view and change the order of the information by hitting the customize tab on the page and walking through the steps to change the view to one of your liking.

You can also add in new employees in this tab and suffice it say, Bamboo HR makes it easy to do so with a few primary pieces of information (like hire dates, contact information and more). In this field you can then offer the employee access to Bamboo HR (they will receive an email where they can then follow a link to set up their passwords) and then the new employee will have access to the system.  In the tools bar (which we will get to further in the review) you can set permissions for various employees and managers.  Some people from HR and executives as well as managers may be able to view the new employee’s more personal information such as salary while the rest of the company may only view the person’s contact info and photo.

The employee tab is where you can also update the information for a single employee or a whole group — following a few steps and watching one of Bamboo’s self-help videos can show you how easy the process is.

Customizations: BambooHR also makes it easy to create custom fields, tables, and tabs, giving users accurate data on demand. The system tracks everything from education and skills to incidents, certifications and shirt size. Standard or historical tables also add to the system’s robust reporting functionality.

Files: This is where you can store company-wide information such as handbooks and other documents you wish your employees to view.

Reports: BambooHR offers two types of reports: default and custom. Default reports, like Compensation History, Turnover Rate, Missing Data, and Time Off Balances are always ready and waiting. You can easily create custom reports at any time for any field in the system. Examples include Training History and Benefit Enrollment, among others.

Tools and Manage Area - the Tools and the Manage Area (located at the very top right hand of the screen) are where  Bamboo’s core admin features live. Tools such as creating email alerts to remind you of a new employee’s 30 day milestone for instance are available for the HR people. Also, in the tool tab you can create company-wide announcements and Bamboo does a nice job making it easy to follow the steps to create these company announcements.  Some of the other tools include enabling electronic signatures and much more.

The Management tab in BambooHR is where you can set up the specifics of the benefit offerings and other such important information that will populate people’s dashboards.  You can insert in vacation day information and health benefits while in the management tab.  Management is also where you can set “permissions” of who can view what information.

In addition to some of the important HR functionality, management is where you find the Single Sign On solution.

Pricing

BambooHR is very affordable (compare it to other HR solutions and you will see that is the case). Pricing runs from $49 per month for one to ten users and then goes up to $99 per month for 11-25 users.  The solution has pricing for larger organizations as well — for example $199 per month for up to 100 users to $399 per month for 200 or more users.  

Bottom Line

BambooHR is a fairly robust tool for small businesses that may not have large HR departments – or none at all.  A lot of the functionality is easy to learn and a business has the option of importing  data, or going through BambooHR’s 5-Step implementation process to get up and running more quickly.

BambooHR is an excellent help for many small businesses (even mid-sized) as it provides the tools you need to offer your business the HR functions one may find in a larger organization.  The other positive – BambooHR has tremendous customer services and their specialists will customize the program to fit your business needs.

Ratings: ease of use 4/5, features 5/5, value 5/5 and ease of deployment 5/5

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The objective is to help users to increase the benefits that they can get from Clarizen and give insights about Clarizen´s features and usability.

In this article you will find video tutorials on the following topics:

1. Building Your First Clarizen Project Tutorial
2. Clarizen Chat Tutorial
3. Clarizen InterAct Tutorial for Admin Users

1-Building Your First Clarizen Project Tutorial

2-Clarizen Chat Tutorial

3-Clarizen InterAct Tutorial for Admin Users

You can also compare Clarizen with similar products and read more articles about Clarizen and related topics.

Because there are so many, it it’s difficult to know what you need for your business now, and what you can do without until a later date. One thing that no business is going to survive long without, however, is a solid email platform. In this AtMail review we will see how it delivers email for businesses in a really big way.

AtMail is much more than a simple email program for business. It’s an email solution for small to medium-sized businesses that need the flexibility of shared calendars, seamless mobility, simple syncing, and easy-to-implement branding options from their email.

If you’re on the go as much as I am, you’ll see the real beauty of AtMail is that it allows you to switch from desktop to laptop to tablet to mobile phone without sacrificing any of the full, rich features you expect from the AtMail service.

Email Solutions for Today’s Busy Marketers

Business owners today have sales teams that are more mobile than ever. Many managers, executives, and other workers take their work away from the office almost as much as they’re in the office – if not more — in fields where the bulk of the work is done on the road. Even freelancers like me take a lot of their work on the road, to the park, the library, hotels, and well, just about anyplace other than the office.

Traditional email methods lack easy synchronization in the best of times. That isn’t the case with AtMail.

Great Looking Email Management System with Clean Lines and Adequate White Spaces

You don’t have to worry about losing the important stuff in the clutter when you use AtMail services. The pages are easy to read and navigate. The lines are clean and well-defined whether you’re working on a desktop computer, tablet devices, or through mobile phone apps.

One area where other productivity-type programs fail is in finding the balance between work and home life. What I particularly like about the AtMail program is the fact that it allows users to identify personal and professional activities on the calendar as well as who has access to which calendar. This comes in handy for me.

In other words, not everything on the calendar is freely shared with the entire team. Anyone that has tried to juggle two calendars in the past knows how tricky that can be.

From a business perspective, the fact that you can truly take AtMail email and make it your own with logos and other branding tools is a huge plus for most small and medium-sized businesses. It gives a small business the ability to look “big” with these features.

You can also use as many domains as needed. You can even cluster domains to identify specific groups of people you’d like “read in” on your email, calendar, or to have access to your storage area. Users have the option of including everyone in their address books to make major announcements.

Many businesses struggle with the notable differences between different platforms. That isn’t a problem with AtMail. The ActiveSync is another boon that makes AtMail really stand out from the crowd.

The Basics: What Does It Look Like?

The AtMail website provides important clues about the platform itself. The site is open, uncluttered, and attractive to visitors. This is also the case of the email and calendar.

Once you sign up you’ll want to get started right away. The great thing about AtMail is that they don’t leave you wondering what to do. They take you to the page where you’ll get things going for your business and the site offers easy-to-follow instructions about what comes next.

Now that it’s time to check your email, you’re sure to love how simple it is to access and read.

The calendar is an organizer’s dream with options to make some information public, keep other information private, and easily identify personal or family commitments and business commitments at a glance.

The Good: Easy to Use and Personalize The Bad: Not the Right Choice for All

AtMail is a fairly simple product to use. This means that it won’t take a large amount of time to train team members and support staff to use the system. More importantly, the organizational aspect of this particular email program may actually help your team become more productive and profitable. That’s the real reason businesses are interested in programs such as this in the first place.

Also worth note is the exceptional customer service you can expect when doing business with AtMail before and after the sale. That’s a rarity in this day and age by itself. Not only does AtMail offer sales tickets that allow you to ask detailed questions about their services, but they also allow you to explore their own Wiki page that explains a great deal about what AtMail is and what their products and services have to offer before you even become a member.

However, it should be noted that this is not the right solution for all businesses. Large businesses may find AtMail somewhat cumbersome or restrictive where small and medium sized businesses are more likely to see broader appeal.

Pricing: Will It Fit Your Budget?

Perhaps the best news about AtMail to small and mid-size business owners is that it is a budget-friendly product. While it is still a “per user” it’s not something that even a sole proprietor can’t afford.  It’s priced much lower than its nearest competitor on the market and offers more features. You don’t purchase the product outright. Instead, you purchase a yearly license that allows you one year of outstanding customer support and service.

Is It For You?

As I’ve mentioned before, AtMail isn’t the right solution for all businesses. I’ve yet to see a one-size-fits-all platform that works well for all businesses all the time. However, for medium and small businesses in need of greater efficiency and time/resource management, it’s hard to imagine going wrong by using AtMail for your email needs. Take advantage of the free trial and see how quickly AtMail has you ready to sign up for a longer-term commitment.

Ratings: ease of use 5/5, features 4/5, value 3/5 and ease of deployment 5/5

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We will look at its features, interface, and see how it can be of use to you.

The Evolution of a Training Solution

ProProfs started life as a popular free quiz website for certification exams. Sameer Bhatia, founder of the solution, says the solution’s big break came when organizations demanded a paid version of the tool to customize it for their in-house training. In this case, it meant that they wanted security and branding features so that they could use the tool for employee training and testing. Instead of converting the tool into paid software, Bhatia opted for a freemium pricing strategy. They also expanded into the larger sphere of training and related web-based e-learning tools such as LMS software. “There has been no looking back,” says Bhatia.

Its beginnings, as an online education software has not restricted ProProfs’ client roster. ProProfs counts clients from a wide range of industries, including disparate industries such as construction and manufacturing services. It has received positive reviews for being an all-in-one tool, which provides a comprehensive training solution to all types of industries. “The reason is that we are a versatile tool, flexible and configurable for various training apps,” says Bhatia.

According to him, the biggest benefits of using ProProfs for small businesses are cost and time saving. “This is possible because our online training can be accessed anytime and from anywhere,” he says.

Designing Training Materials Using ProProfs

I started the process of ProProfs review by signing up for the free version of the solution. Setting up ProProfs is extremely easy. You can begin creating learning materials immediately after creating an account. The application offers multiple learning options from quizzes to training to polls and surveys. I opted for course creation. Broadly, you can create courses in multiple formats and styles. For example, you can create a course consisting of multiple articles or quizzes. Depending on the choice that you have opted for, the solution offers multiple options.

For example, I wanted to create a business course with multiple articles. Proprofs immediately displayed options to segment and add chapters and pages to my course. There are several elements or settings associated with each artifact. For example, you can configure security notifications, enrolment notifications and permissions for each course. ProProfs also includes preview and analytics capabilities to track feedback for your learning artifact after it has been dispatched. An audit history of modifications to a course is also available in the application.

The menu of options available for each training option in the solution is exhaustive. Despite this, the solution is not complex. According to Bhatia, simplicity was the guiding principle while designing the solution. “From the product to customer support; we keep the user experience simple and delightful, every step of the way,” says Bhatia.

That simplicity is transferred to the solution’s comprehensive suite of analytics as well. You can generate reports tracking usage and completion rates for your courses. You can also configure automated grading of your courses, online certifications or conduct classrooms using features available within the system. “This ensures that our online tools provide a comprehensive elearning software to instructors, organizations and business in the simplest way possible,” says Bhatia.

Selling Courses Through ProProfs

One of the more interesting features in the solution is its e-commerce shop. ProProfs users can also earn revenue through their courses by submitting them to the solution’s e-commerce storefront. The terms of store are skewed towards the seller. ProProfs does not charge users to promote quizzes and courses through their platform. In addition, you can opt for the zero percent revenue share option if you use your own billing system or pay 20% if you use ProProfs billing system – which is significantly reduced for customers with a subscription to their software. You can also opt out of billing (and revenue share) at any time and use ProProfs as a course-delivery software.

Pros & Cons

I really like the fact that the solution does not limit itself to a single learning artifact. Instead, it offers an assortment of artifacts that provide flexibility to the learner as well as instructor. These artifacts are also easy to create, maintain, and share through social networks. Finally, I thought that their e-commerce platform is a truly innovative idea for users. It helps create a repository of useful e-learning content. Apart from the obvious platform benefit, this strategy also enables you to make sense of the market by tracking the types of learning deliverables and artifacts that are popular within the platform.

Pricing

ProProfs is entirely free for creating public quizzes or courses.

Private use has three tiers of pricing: Professional, Business & Enterprise.

The Professional Plan is designed for educators and instructors as it allows them to create courses, assessments, polls, surveys and manage learners through online classrooms. The Business Plan includes all the features of the Professional Plan with the added benefit of custom branding. It is targeted towards small and medium sized businesses who what to create branded online courses and assessments for their employees, with option for creating online certification. Large enterprises looking for features such as enterprise security, API & SSO integration, reporting access control, phone support, white label can go for the Enterprise plan. This is the highest plan and is for large business who are looking to create extensive online training programs.

The Bottom Line

ProProfs enables you to create new instructional and training material in an innovative manner. The e-commerce platform also ensures that you can earn revenue off your e-learning material. Highly recommended.

Ratings:  ease of use 4/5, features 5/5, value 5/5 and ease of deployment 4/5

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That’s how Cyfe came to be. Deven Patel, founder of Cyfe, saw a real need in the business community for a method of gathering and collecting data in one place. As an entrepreneur, he was well aware of how much time was spent on gathering data, creating reports, and interacting with various portals and services throughout the day. Today, in my Cyfe review, we’ll find out if Deven succeeded.

All Your Key Business Data in One Convenient Location

There was a need in the business community to provide access to vital information in one convenient location. Not only is gathering information from all corners of the Internet a painstaking process, but it’s also time-consuming. Cyfe makes the entire process fast and easy.

Cyfe is an all-in-one business dashboard app that helps you monitor and analyze data scattered across all your online services like Google Analytics, MailChimp, Pinterest, Alexa, Klout, Instagram, SEOmoz, PayPal, LinkedIn, AdSense, Facebook, Constant Contact, AWeber, Salesforce, WordPress, and more.from one single location in real-time. You can connect your website, blog, email, social media accounts, and so much more to your Cyfe dashboards. You can even bring your company’s internal data into Cyfe via custom widgets.

It’s more than a simple dashboard or access point however. You can download reports, schedule email reports, and share the information with your team so that everyone is on the same page – literally.

You don’t have to stare at tiny little widgets all day and pray your eyesight holds out either. You can use TV mode to easily switch one or more of the dashboards on your monitor to the big screen monitor. If you prefer a certain look or want branded reports, the customization options available with Cyfe are sure to please too.

Internet Business Owners and Email Marketers – This is the Tool for You

There’s finally a tool out there that’s designed to make your job on the Internet much easier. Anyone who does a lot of switching back and forth on the Internet, for whatever reason, though can greatly benefit from Cyfe. This includes social media mavens who are constantly switching from Twitter to Facebook, LinkedIn, KLOUT, Pinterest and all points in between.

Startups can utilize this tool to monitor their day to day operations such as keeping tabs on number of new sign ups, conversions, and revenue.

Stock analysts who need real time access to data about stocks as they stream across the Internet are other people who can appreciate the capabilities that Cyfe represents for them.

Cyfe dashboards help you make better business decisions and save a ton of time by bringing all your business performance data under one roof and not having to log into multiple services every day.

The Basics: What Does it Look Like?

Based on your specific business needs you can configure Cyfe to look like however you want. You can have a social media dashboard, web analytics dashboard, business operations dashboard, or marketing dashboard. There are infinite possibilities. Below is an example of a fully configured dashboard.

Once you sign up for the Cyfe free membership, an excellent starting point for anyone considering Cyfe, you’ll be taken to the dashboard area where you can begin installing widgets.

There is no need for complex or lengthy instructions. The “back office” area of the dashboard is extremely self-explanatory. You click on the little box on the tool bar to install your widgets and choose from the drop down menu. The widgets then appear on your blank canvas for you to arrange as you prefer.

Once you have the widgets you want installed (free trial subscribers have access to a limited number of widgets, you’ll have to upgrade your account for more) on your dashboard, you’re free to play around with the background and layout. You can add your own background or you can use one of the preset options available through Cyfe.

The Good: Fast Access to Vital Information – The Bad: Temptation is Front and Center

The best thing about Cyfe is that it gives you all the information you need at your fingertips. No more sorting through open windows in your browser. No more accidentally shutting down the wrong window because you have so many open that your mouse is constantly finding the wrong one. The Cyfe solution for getting all your vital information in one location is so elegant and simple it feels as if it’s almost too easy. This dashboard is the perfect eye candy for anyone with a slight deficiency in the attention department.

The downside however, especially for those who find social networks to be a supreme temptation or who have trouble not checking email boxes every five seconds is that temptation is there, right before your very eyes with Cyfe. There’s no hiding from it unless you have the willpower to delete the widget. In other words, you must exercise self-control. On the flip side, having real-time access to business performance data means that you can fix problems occurring in your business as fast as possible.

Will it Fit Your Budget?

This is perfect question to ask and the answer is a resounding, “Yes.” Free works with almost any budget. While you’ll only have access to a limited number of widgets, your free Cyfe account is the perfect tool to allow you to explore the potential of this dashboard for your Internet business and play. If you find the limit too restricting then you can explore the surprisingly affordable upgrade options.

Is It For You?

If you’re a serious business owner or manager looking to take your business to the next level with invaluable real-time insights then, it’s for you. With a free membership, there’s no reason to put off finding out for you. Try it on for size and see how you like the fit and feel of all your favorite places online on your all-in-one business dashboard.

Ratings: ease of use 5/5, features 4/5, value 5/5 and ease of deployment 5/5

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A Different Approach To CRM

Given the glut of CRM solutions in the market, I was curious to know how Manash Chaudhuri, founder of Converge CRM, distinguished his solution from other available alternatives. According to him, none of the market solutions approach CRM in a comprehensive manner.

“Salesforce is the market leader in the enterprise world but only solves the sales side of business,” he says. “To get the marketing side, you have to go in for third party integration, which, in turn, costs additional license fees.” Similarly, open source solutions require extensive IT and network setup. Other CRM solutions are limited in their customization capabilities.

Chaudhuri says that Converge Enterprise is designed to be comprehensive, in marketing as well as sales. “It is a complete integration suite of sales, marketing and communication solutions for small businesses,” he says. This means that it adapts easily to your marketing needs. Converge Enterprise comes packaged with a world-class automated engine to power your CRM needs and has specialized features, such as – ability to configure both simple and complex DRIP marketing campaigns. All of these are available at price points that are affordable for small businesses. “ You don’t have to buy third-party applications for specific tasks,” says Chaudhuri.

Any Converge Enterprise review would be incomplete without a mention of its guiding principles. While designing the solution, Chaudhuri and his team were guided by the design principles of simplicity and flexibility. “We have made Converge Enterprise highly intuitive, super simple and easy to deploy and learn,” he says. This meant that they wanted to make the software simple and flexible enough to change and suit the business and not the other way round. “ User acceptance and value proposition of the solution for small businesses go up with this approach,” he says.

Converging Your CRM Strategy With Converge

Converge Enterprise can be used for a variety of tasks, including lead management and campaign management. In fact, the solution’s dashboard provides a comprehensive look at the solution’s features. Thus, you can view and customize key metrics related to your CRM efforts, such as leads by source, acquisitions or number of new deals and activities.

Converge Enterprise has features that span the gamut of the full marketing and sales lifecycle. For example, you can enter, track, and close deals using the solution. In addition, you can generate customizable reports and analytics to track your efforts.

Converge Enterprise includes team management features that enable you to create a hierarchy of features and set data security rules for access permissions. You can track all details associated with a contact, whether it is an individual or organization.

You can also use the solution as a time scheduler and calendar.

However, Converge’s real utility is in its capability to automate the sales process. You can configure rules and descriptions for each task associated with your process. Each rule is associated with a trigger point and can be related to specific leads. You can specify trigger actions and flows (such as sending out emails or notifications after a specified period of time) etc. This facility can be especially useful while implementing a custom marketing campaign such as the DRIP marketing campaign.

Pros & Cons

There are several things to like about Converge Enterprise. For one, it has a simple and easy-to-use interface that is both intuitive and useful. I also liked the fact that Converge Enterprise is integrated with social media. With a public API and numerous custom features, it is relatively easy to manipulate the solution to suit your process. This is especially important for small businesses that struggle with SaaS solutions, which have great features but cannot be customized to suit their ends. I also liked the fact that the solution has integrated team management features. Thus, instead of building out a new tool (or, integrating the tool with an existing feature), Converge Enterprise makes it easier for you to track tasks and manage your time.

Pricing

Based on the feature list available to users, Converge Enterprise has three tiers of operation: Lite, Professional, and Premium. Each tier is associated with an increasing set of features that enable you to scale your campaign costs and operations. Each tier also has two price points for users: monthly and annual. For example, you can add unlimited contacts and associate quotes with product details or fax details using the premium features.

The Bottom Line

With its extensive feature list, flexible and affordable pricing, Converge Enterprise scores on all counts. As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, most CRM solutions have two problems: expense and customization. Converge Enterprise solves both problems and makes it possible for small businesses to implement world-class campaigns at affordable costs.

Ratings:  ease of use 4/5, features 5/5, value 5/5 and ease of deployment 4/5

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This tutorial is also in response to a multitude of questions we have been getting recently about Insightly. Insightly has a wealth of highly useful features that would be a shame to waste.

The tutorial topics covered in this post are:

1. Introduction to Insightly 
2. Working with Email
3. Uploading and Managing Files
4. Mastering Tags
5. Managing Projects

1. Introduction to Insightly

2. Working with Email

3. Uploading and Managing Files

4. Mastering Tags

5. Managing Projects

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