We use Goldmine CRM combined with QuoteWerks product database. I know its old-school, being real ‘installed’ software, but it suits our needs just fine. The products come from different companies, but integrate.
While they are not trying to compete with Salesforce.com, they must see that one of the growing strengths of Salesforce is the community around it. So both software companies have recently come up with networking tools around their products.
Goldmine’s parent, Frontrange has gone with Leverage Software, which is the same as Salesforce uses. QuoteWerks has opted to create a Linked-in Group, something I didn’t know existed.
For FrontRange, they already have a vibrant user group, mostly with consultants and installers helping each other. This new community is targeted at folks like me, and appears not to be technical at all. For QuoteWerks, this is all-new, as far as I can tell.
I am at least interested that these folks are truly my peers, folks running the same software and dealing with the same issues with it (and our sales processes), but am far from feeling a desire to be engaged with the community.
So, like joining Linked-in to begin with, the question remains…what happens next? Will people use these communities? Are they any better than their message-board predecessors?