Today’s lunch brought a reminder that I need to get moving on those good ideas. Coincidentally, this afternoon and tomorrow, I finally have more than half an hour to myself to work on some stuff.
Project One? The Contact Management System (CMS).
This year, I’m trying out Prophet, by Avidian. I’ve done Act and Top Producer and didn’t like them at all. I’ve been using the “I Have An Excellent Memory System” but we’re quickly coming to the limits of that. Time to get some of these task reminders out of my head and into a system, so there’s room to remember the important stuff. Like, for example, remembering to buy toothpaste on the way home.
My beef with Top Producer and Act was twofold: I didn’t find either interface intuitive, and I didn’t like having to open a separate application to manage all the stuff that goes on in my Outlook anyway. Big priorities for me in a CMS are tight Outlook integration and automatic scheduling of predefined sets of tasks.
So far, Avidian’s Prohpet fits the bill. When a new person emails me, I can click a button, add them to the contacts, create an opportunity, assign them to a follow-up schedule, all the fun stuff you use a CMS for, and it’s all in one place. I spend my day in Outlook anyway, and my Treo syncs to it nicely. So far, so good. Now I must train myself to continue to use it and keep tweaking it to do exactly what I want.
Project Two? The Website Redesign.
Oy. This is a big project. Between managing a busy business, a fur-filled household, and ever lengthening rehearsals for an upcoming performance, I’m starting to get overwhelmed. Since I’ve got a couple other people tied into this project, I need a share-able, online, project management service.
I looked into the 37 Signals stuff, but don’t see the Gantt chart capability that I want – that’s my preferred view. If I’m missing that somewhere in there, please someone tell me! I can use MS Project, but I loose the online sharing. Google docs, are you listening?
Well, I can get moving on Project One, anyway. I don’t have time to completely conquer the world today, but I can get started.
What’s the good idea you need to Go Do?
