Our company purchased and implemented FrontRange’s Goldmine® at the end of 2005. This is a 3 year lookback at its strengths and weaknesses and whether we would choose to go down the same road again if we had the choice today.
At the beginning of 2005 we were a 6-man shop with less than 100 clients so it was easy for us to keep up with contact information and share client details with our team. However, by the end of 2005 we were eyeing our first acquisition and we new we would need a more efficient way to manage information. Through the recommendation of a trusted consultant we began exploring Goldmine®. Of the features that attracted our attention, the most important were that it was based on SQL Server and attached all inbound and outbound e-mail to a contact record automatically.
We soon installed the software and were off and running. Aside from the very un-2005 interface (more like 1990) and annoying mannerisms (such as random screen refreshes and the exclusion of Windows standards like “undo” and floating windows) I suppose we were somewhat happy. We were after-all still in the throws of an interesting acquisition that brought much more load to our team then we were expecting, so Goldmine® wasn’t at the top of our list.
Maintenance
After the first year we received our first note from FrontRange to renew our product maintenance. Of course having tried using their support a few times in the first year and not seeing a single worthwhile maintenance upgrade I opted not to renew the maintenance. However, being a growing company we soon needed new licenses and I was informed that we couldn’t purchase new Goldmine® licenses without renewing maintenance. WOW! Now that’s a zinger… overnight the TCO doubles in price (or I suppose becomes infinite if you continue indefinitely), which isn’t cheap to begin with. I believe we had 15k in our initial first year software costs (not including hardware, and labor). At no time in our purchase process was this made clear. Not wanting to rip everything out, we bit the bullet and we have been buying maintenance ever since.
Data Structure
Goldmine® reuses tables for different purposes so a column called “Email” might actually be a street address in one row and a date stamp in another. These are fictitious examples but I assure you the point is real. Additionally there is no such thing as a one-to-many relationship between company data and contacts. So every contact creates a new company and they have a really hacked together way of joining additional contacts together in an org chart. The data mess associated with the org chart stuff would make your head spin. We needed to integrate Goldmine® with our own software for managing other parts of the business, and this single issue has created a very lousy connection and will probably ultimately precipitate a move to something else.
“New Version”
So after 2 years of the clunky 1990’s style interface and no undo function (this is a really important feature in goldmine after the screen refreshes and you accidentally wipe out the text of the e-mail you were working on) we find out there is a big new release that has a nice looking interface and new features. Of course we are on product maintenance so we expect it to be included. WRONG! We have to pay to upgrade to the new version because they have changed the name to Goldmine® Premium. They added 1 or 2 new features and called it a new program. For legal reasons I won’t say that’s a rip-off, but you can draw your own conclusions.
Poor Support
We originally installed Goldmine® onto Windows 2000 server with SQL 2000 db. Of course we now want to get it off that old server and onto 05 or 08. We contacted support for the procedure and were informed that there isn’t an official procedure and we need to work with a partner. We are paying $4,000 a year for support and maintenance and we want to do something as simple as rehosting the application to a new server and we need to involve a partner. Perfect.
We have asked for support on a variety of other issues and haven’t faired much better than the example above. In one case one of our techs waited on hold for 30 minutes and then they wanted a credit card before they would help. I suppose that was some glitch where they didn’t understand we were on maintenance but all the same..
We pay maintenance on other products such as BackBone’s Netvault® backup software. I don’t like the fees there either, but their support is prompt and helpful so its worth the money.
Conclusion
Despite the commentary this isn’t designed to be a bash of Goldmine®. We have used it for 3 years and it certainly has its ups and downs. We wouldn’t have been able to keep organized as we have grown from 6 to near 30 people in 3 years without some kind of CRM and Goldmine® does some things well. If some other CRM vendors would provide an integrated e-mail conduit and a good one-to-many relationship between companies and contacts we would be very likely to switch. So far, unless we roll our own software I haven’t seen any viable options so for now we’ll grumble and stick around. Here are some summary strengths and weaknesses for Goldmine® if you are considering a purchase.
Strengths:
- Integrated e-mail client
- Desktop-based system. Power users will find it faster than a web-based sytem
- Full-featured. There are gobs of features built in
- SQL Server based (vs. a proprietary or non TCP/IP accessible RDMS)
Weaknesses:
- Database structure
- FrontRange corporation (a customer-centric management style would take this product far)
- Desktop-based system.
- Deployment to remote locations is going to be a hassle.
Have you reviewed other vendors like Maximizer and Soffront? We have been using GoldMine as well for several years (6.7 right now) and face similar issues that you do. It looks cheaper to by a new product rather then upgrade to Premium.
Thanks for your post — we had to evaluate Maximizer for a client project a few months back and it seemed decent. I think the biggest reason we originally chose Goldmine was its ability to automatically track e-mail as part of a pending or history item in the contact history. I haven’t yet found a CRM as a manual addition to the record vs. the way Goldmine handles it. Of course there are shortcomings in how this behavior is implemented and hasn’t evolved but its still very useful for us. Let us know if you’ve seen any options that implement that feature well.
Has anyone tried Wired Contact Enterprises. We have demoed and tested and works very good.
What are the desktop based system weaknesses of Goldmine.
How is the syncronization stability of Goldmine
Last I checked with Goldmine they didnt offer a trial test drive install to try before you buy.
We didn’t have much success with the Sync, but someone is our organization saw it work successfully at another company.
Took a quick look at Wired Contact. First impression is that it might be good and like the option of using a couple different popular DB’s but the UI could use some updating and work to make it more intuitive and simple.
We are migrating from ACT 2005 and the WCE’s UI is very simliar so it would make the transistion easier. Besides the UI is that all the issues you know of.
Any thougts using Salesforce and a CRM called Inside Sales.
So you dont use Goldmine for offline access. Is that ever a problem when internet is not available or slow.
I have been a Goldmine user since 2002, and do agree with your comments about the Frontrange organisation, and the cluncky nature stemming from contact management instead of account management.
I did interim management for a large organisation that used the much praised salesforce.com, and that was a POS by comparison – at least in the setup used there.
For an organisation like yours you should probably go with the account based Goldmine Entreprise instead.
I am about to start another company and I am 100% sure that I will use Goldmine. If you use the system capabilities it is amazing what that system can do for you. Your ability to automate business processes is second to none as far as I have seen. Automated processes, and conditional files allow you to do more advanced e-mail marketing than any e-mail marketing application I have come across.
You do not need to make an intranet as it is build in, and you can exchange information with external applications via XML and iCAL.
I do not like that you cannot use this as an accounts based system, unless you do not use automated processes, in which case you can just use the additional contacts function. Also email formatting and the lack of MAPI compliance is a drawback.
The system (and especially the company) has some flaws, but if you use it well it is a virtual goldmine.
Kind Regards
Jens
To the comments on the need for internet access, there are indigenous goldmine applications, and citrix, go global… applications that can deliver any desktop application via an internet connection.
I have tested Go Global with Goldmine and it tons faster than ex. Salesforce.com (which I absolutely hate)
KR jens
Sorry for the delayed replies guys, but thanks for the comments.
Jens — I agree about the automated processes. They have a lot of promise for automating and organizing responses and actions. Having to manually attach them (never found a way that it would scan and attach a process) was a bit of a drawback though. I never did enough research to see how the XML and iCAL integration might work, do you have a link? We are working on some new external integrations where that might be useful. We have a client that used Salesforce’s professional services (apparently not too expensive) to setup and customize Salesforce for them and they were very pleased with the results. Maybe thats what is required but each time I think I’m ready to give them another chance I sign up for a demo and am sorely disappointed with the clunkiness and general power of it.
John — Goldmine really functions as a LAN app vs. a WAN/Internet app so its not so much the Internet access being the issue. If it can’t connect to the DB and the fileshare it won’t even start up. You can install it as a disconnected install (there is a different Goldmine term for it) where it will store data locally and then sync up but that just seems like a data mess waiting to happen. Supposedly it works but we couldn’t make it work and certainly weren’t going to count on Frontrange support to bail us out!
Found your blog while looking for Goldmine alarm info. Glad it is current.
I am thinking of upgrading or replacing my old Goldmine 4.0 which is left over from a bigger business that closed (a small portion of which I took over).
Currently I run what is more or less a one-man importing and distribution business.
From the WEB research I have done I am probably going to stay with Goldmine despite all its warts (especially Frontrange).
There are new-in-the-box copies of Goldmine 6.7 available on the WEB for under $100, although the current version is something like 8.5 and much pricier.
The point being I am thinking that upgrading my Goldmine 4 to something newer while keeping my costs down. I don’t need multi-user or software integration right now (fought that battle before and lost), but may later as my business grows.
If wishes were granted I would like something like Goldmine that is integrated with an accounting package like Quickbooks (unfortunately Intuit and Frontrange are cut from the same cloth), manages all my email from Thunderbird plus any documents I create, on a per contact basis, and also integrates with a shipping program that can give me rates for various shippers (and prints invoices and waybills). All this from an intelligent user interface. And, since this is wishing, is open source. I would prefer to pay for support than software, assuming the support is real and available.
Any opinions (ignoring my wish list) on what I should replace Goldmine with or which Goldmine version to upgrade to (and why) are very welcome.
From my experience if you are already familiar with GM and its not going to cost you a bundle ($100 is a great price) then go for it. I would bet there are some snags with the licensing if you ever needed to upgrade or add additional licenses, but it sounds like you’re pretty static and I don’t see much to lose. Goldmine Premium over GM 6.7, etc. isn’t worth the extra $. Just a couple bug fixes and a new skin.
Your wish list would certainly be nice to see in a piece of software
We paid $500-$600 for the GM->QB integration (not sure if its still offered) that never worked well. It would supposedly sync the invoice/payment history with the contact but the issue was that since GM is contact based instead of company based making the two tie together was a mess and didn’t really give you the data you were looking for anyway.
I worked for a GM partner for many years before moving on to bigger and better things and the feelings and complaints mentioned here are voiced by more than a few GM customers. GM isn’t necessarily a bad product and as has been said, is loaded with features that you just won’t find anywhere else for the price. However, dealing with the likes of FrontRange can be very frustrating at times. The partners get just as frustrated as the customers and I recall on several occasions being left sort of high and dry by FrontRange with a problem a customer was having that we just couldn’t figure out.
FrontRange also seems to have a sort of odd view of software development, many times focusing on adding features rather than fixing bugs and revamping designed features. There are several design flaws and bugs that have plagued GM for years that have just never been dealt with and one of the most annoying things off all is the refresh issue which I believe is the root of many problems in GM.
While GM has its flaws, in all fairness I must also add that very often with customer complaints I found that it wasn’t GM at fault, but rather the lack of training or understanding of how GM works by the customer. I can’t count the number of installations I did where the customer would spend thousands upon thousands for installation and customization and then not spend a dime for training. This is a recipe for disaster that plays out day after day. There were also quite a few customers that went to another product claiming GM was a POS when in fact it was their own lack of understanding and failure to procure training that was the root of their problems. Some also came back with their tail between there legs some months or years later.
Another problem area is self-installation. I wish I had a dime for all the customers that shot themselves in the foot by trying to install and customize GM themselves. Again, many would come back complaining of problems when the real problem was a flawed installation because they didn’t understand how GM worked. The fact is, most companies don’t really have good processes for sales and marketing in the first place and the self-installers will attempt to make GoldMine conform to their poor practices rather than getting serious about their efforts and going with a partner that understands both the sales and marketing side and how GM is best configured to accomplish the ultimate goal. There are a lot of GM partners that are good with the product from a technical point of view, but from an application perspective they are just as in the dark as the customer.
So with all this said, GM can be a good fit if you are willing to put forth the effort and resources necessary to do it right.
We are using Goldmine here for approximately 60 users. The data structure is very annoying but we have been able to manage it. Use of special characters withing the accountno is especially shocking. I’ve never figured out why they don’t concentrate of fixing the fundamental flaws of the software.
Users have a difficult time with a number of items. The interface (and we are using 8.5) is clunky. Search is a nightmare. If they want contacts for product x in Toronto and Montreal they need to do two different searches. (The and/or logic never seems to behave consistently).
I struggle with supporting my users between hating the software myself and advocating for it. I’m afraid half the time I look like and idiot when I show them how they can use groups but then they see they are limited to three columns and the ref column is truncated!
And speaking of truncation, what is up with those field length limits? Half the contact1 fields are too short. Between Dutch and German company names and Middle Eastern contact names we are constantly running out of room. I have alternative fields for half the primary columns!
Overall, I’m looking for perspective on the problem of non-enterprise CRM and am curious to here real thoughts from the folks charged with supporting and implementing users on these systems.
Anyplace out there that does this? Is this it?
Appreciated you honest, thorough assesment of your experience.
Bryan, sorry for the delayed response but there is a decently active forum at http://www.castellcomputers.com/ where there seems to be some GM expertise you can bounce things off. If you have some specific questions we can help with let us know as well, although our environment and requirements are a little different since most of our users are pretty technically savvy.
LJ,
I can agree with your post — I think a lack of training is universal to software. I think unfortunately its accentuated quite severely by 1) Goldmine is very feature rich, which isn’t a bad thing or necessarily their fault but 2) Its buggy and somewhat unconventional in the UI and behavior (such as undo being left out until version 8 and still not fully supported). The 2 things together, possibly combined with a poor install and lackluster GM support, means bad news in most cases.
Thanks,
Jon
Thanks for the article. I agree with your sentiments – a good highlighting of strengths and weaknesses. I hope FR will take this as a wake-up call to improve their organization and focus more on the consumer. I also think the data structure *really* needs some love and care.
Hey Jon,
Thanks for the information there – I can appreciate your point of view, but I wanted to offer a solution as well. I used Goldmine for waaaay too long and discovered that we actually saved money by switching our 37 users to Google Apps, using Insightly CRM (there are others – just check out Google Apps marketplace) for managing contacts, and importing all our legacy email and contacts using Google’s Email Migration plans (http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=57920), so we didn’t have to do a bunch of housekeeping by maintaining Goldmine just to access our old records. All those old emails now reside within Gmail! We are now able to have uninterrupted service for all employees on a solid system with which everyone is familiar, link emails, sales, notes, projects, documents, and Lord knows what else to all our contacts, and we’re saving money and headache to boot! I HIGHLY suggest this move for you and your team. You won’t be sorry.
Dan,
Thanks for the comment, glad the perspective could be of value. We’ll definitely check out the Google Apps/Insightly option. In fact I mentioned in our mgt meeting yesterday. We just bought a SAN to stabilize the data and speed for GM (plus some other non GM data needs) so we’re fully invested at this point. However no sense putting good money after bad. We’ll definitely check it out, so thanks for the heads up!
Jon
thanks for this thread.. finally able to find useful information regarding GM.. my company is in the process of switching CRM from this very very very poor system known as “back office – aka – the devil”.. I am pushing hard for goldmine, however, a few salespeople that have never used either.. are pushing for salesforce.com which I can’t stand.. any suggestions? has salesforce actually gotten any better over the years, and in the same way.. has Goldmine?
While Goldmine has improved a little, I would caution going the GM direction if you don’t have buy-in from your sales people. Goldmine takes a while to learn and can be difficult to implement. My guess is even if its working ok, a lack of buy-in will sabotage your efforts. Depending on what you need to do to bring it online the good thing about Salesforce is hopefully you don’t have a huge upfront investment if you end up having to bail on it. Not that making any wrong decision isn’t costly but huge licensing fees just add insult to injury.