From Gaetan Fraikin, Audacity's CEO

STOP LOOKING - YOU FOUND IT

Let me guess your situation: your small business needs some type of organization tool for contact management, shared calendar / tasks, and, if at all possible, shared project management. Well, I am sure you found more than enough of those, both client or web-based, with prices ranging from free, to...way too expensive. At this point, after spending hours of research and testing, you probably feel even more lost than before you started. Well, don't feel bad - we all experienced the same process and emotions.

The good news is that, just like us, you did find Solve360. I can't tell you how ecstatic we were when we discovered the solution and started playing with it. We tried all the big and small solutions and came back to what we consider a truly pioneering platform that puts at small businesses' disposal a set of tools that were believed to be reserved for large companies. Each of the three modules built into Solve360 exists with competing systems, but the dramatic value gap of this solution lies into its modules integration. Every piece of information is entered once, and usable across modules. There is no wasted time, and no risk from data duplication. It is also highly intuitive and fun to use, which increases the chances that your team will actually use it. And as you know, if the system is not used, it is worthless. It is web-based, which means that your geographic limitation vanish, and there is no need for hardware and software investment and maintenance.

At this point, you are probably thinking: “sounds great, I should definitely spend time on this to fully evaluate, and maybe ...move forward and select it!”. Well, if you are not there yet, this next reason will do it. Even though Solve360 is simple and intuitive, there will be times where you need help. And with Norada, the notion of service has been pushed to the pinnacle. Every time I email the company, I receive a response within minutes, with accurate, and usable information. Every time we make recommendations for improvement based on what we believe most clients could use, we are listened to, and in most cases, our requests are implemented in a next release. And that is worth a lot!

Our agency, Audacity, is a premier San Diego based branding, communications and advertising agency with global reach. We engineer ultimate brands for Fortune 1000 technology leaders. Our clients expect from our agency nothing less than excellence when it comes to our solutions. We are today able to deliver at that level thanks to Solve360. All projects are set-up in the blog section, they are connected to our activities/calendar, and to contacts. We now have true visibility. Look no further - and welcome to the next level of collaboration.

- Gaetan

AUDACITY PROFILE

Audacity is a premier San Diego based branding, communications and advertising agency with global reach. Audacity builds and delivers powerful brand experiences, unconventional product launches, and international market entries. Its core expertise lies in marketing strategy, international marketing and communications.

Current/past clients include Kodak, Samsung, Motorola, Siemens and Sony, plus a range of tech start-ups. We have client in Europe, Asia and the US.

www.audacitygroup.com

Uncle Ted forgets your name and was last seen passed out at your wedding. Aunt Katie was ecstatic to be at your graduation. She never misses a card for every birthday and Christmas. She calls you often just to see what is new. You like and trust Aunt Katie because it is obvious she cares about you. So you care about her.

Most businesses treat customer relationships like bumbling Uncle Ted, showing up and calling only when it's expected. Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could be Aunt Katie to your clients?

Being able to easily share the same client contact information among your employees is a great benefit, but there are many other advantages to using a centralized CRM system:

So what’s it going to take to make CRM work? We were taught in kindergarten that sharing is good and the same principle applies in business, at least when it comes to managing customers. Share information between staff and departments so your team can provide feedback to each other and respond to your customers in a consistent and efficient way – your customers will notice. Have reasonable expectations – not everyone is going to use the system in exactly the same way or to its maximum potential. That’s still okay. In hindsight you'll notice you are much better off with it than without it.

You can sync your Solve360 events and tasks directly to Mac’s iCal, Google Calendar, Outlook 2007 and the iPhone / iTouch. Here are some short videos to walk you through the simple steps.

Solve360 is an internet based application that helps teams plan, organize information and manage day-to-day projects according to your own company's processes and workflow.

Good up-front planning is essential to running a successful project, but let's be real, just because you want it to happen “this way” isn’t going to make it so. Requirements change, issues pop-up and people respond in unexpected ways. The secret to a successful project is managing the daily project activities. This is where most traditional tools like Microsoft Project let you down and where Solve360 becomes essential. Projects don’t fail all of a sudden; they succeed or fail one day at a time and hinge on your team’s ability to continually synchronize information, communicate and manage changes like a smooth running machine.

I recently had a call with Adrian Sanders, co-founder of a Halfslant, a contemporary art consultancy for alternative spaces and events. He put up some great questions, the type that only someone with street smarts and experience working with a lot of software products would know to ask. After the call he circled back and asked “where can I send feedback to warn the others”. I suggested a post on our blog; here is the latest email as it arrived.

March 11, 2009 It's safe to say that my business starts and ends in Solve360. From the moment in the morning I check my daily activity list to the last review before I call it a day, Solve is where I go to make sure I'm on track.

And basically, once I know what I've got lined up for the day, my world revolves around the contextual search bar, or as I like to call it, The Money Bar. It has proven to be one of the most important parts of my workflow in Solve. And though I've long since lost my ability to read human syntax on computer systems, the layout is a simple, efficient solution that any tech novice will understand.

If you're not familiar with the concept of using tags here are a few words to explain what tags are, what you can do with them and why this simple feature is so useful.