Brightpearl Blog

Get the 93ft high view Posted on July 24th, 2010 by Chris Tanner

This week’s client focus in on Bike-Science.com, a Bristol based outfit selling top end bicycles and offering a custom fitting service to get your ride just right. Read the full story here.

Bike Science run their website on Brightpearl, and wanted to get something up and running fast. Andy, the business owner, doesn’t want to spend his time designing flash graphics and learning HTML/CSS, so he brought in a Sheffield design agency that he’s worked with before; 93ft.

Andy also uses BookingBug, an online booking system, to handle scheduling of his bike fitting diary. Website visitors can book slots online. We’ve got some cool stuff happening with BookingBug over the next month or so. If you manage places on classes or workshops for your members/customers, then definitely have a look.

The booking bug widget has been embedded into his Brightpearl website to provide a seamless view for his customers.

I spoke to Stephen at 93ft about their experience putting a website together for Bike Science. As a design house, they are familiar with Actinic, Shopify and a number of other ecommerce platforms. The Bike Science site was their first experience using Brightpearl, and everyone’s pretty stoked with the results.

“It really didn’t take that long to learn”, says Stephen. “There are a few areas where the platform could do with more features, such as more options in the RSS feeds and easier handling of custom javascript, but we found it easy to put the site together with the aid of the skeleton templates and CSS files.”

There’s no coding involved at all; all you need to design and launch a website on Brightpearl is some HTML and CSS knowledge. If you want, you can even use one of our pre-built themes to make your launch even simpler.

If your website is not yet running on Brightpearl, then why not add a website to your account, get in touch with 93ft and launch a sexy, fully integrated online presence.

Tags:
Posted in Customers, Design, E-commerce | No Comments »

Client focus : Studiotime photography Posted on July 21st, 2010 by Chris Tanner

Martin runs the back-office for StudioTime Photography and London Photography Courses on his Brightpearl account. He runs his website on WordPress, and used our WordPress plugin to connect to his CRM. “I’m not a coder so it was great to have this as a plugin” – it’s easy to install – read how here.

“A year ago I used to use Sage. When I started a new business, in the creative industry, we bought Macs. As this business grew we needed an accounting system, and we didnt want to buy a PC just for Sage, so we ended up with MYOB for the Mac. We struggled with that , left it for a few months, everything piled up – it was awful. I was ringing up sage, “do you do Sage online”, of course the answer was no. “You need to buy a PC” was all they could offer, and that was the end of that.

Whilst I was searching for MYOB alternative, I found Brightpearl. The fact that it was online was great – there are two of us that work from two locations. I love the idea of cloud computing – I’ve had laptops nicked and computers broken, and the fear of losing data on our own computers makes the cloud such a great concept. Having someone else maintain the data security is excellent. That’s brilliant for me. It gets rid of a major headache. I’ve also given access to my accountant who can access the system from his office.

“We get contacts coming to our website, filling out their details on a Brightpearl Smartform and appearing automatically in our CRM system. We raise invoices, handle customers, jobs, invoices and accounting all in the same system.”

Want to be in our next client focus? Get in touch

Tags:
Posted in Customers | No Comments »

Automated monthly billing Posted on June 25th, 2010 by Chris Tanner

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s investment and new brand information, I’m pleased to announce that we’ve updated the billing system so that you don’t need to dig out your credit card each month.

The next time your bill is due, you’ll still get a popup but this time it will be to set up a subscription that recurs automatically every month – saving loads of hassle for both you and us. Of course you have the ability to cancel at any time, and upgrade/downgrade whenever you like.

If you have any questions around billing, pricing or how the free trial works, then please do just get in touch by email: info@brightpearl.com, or telephone 0845 003 8935 in the UK.

Whilst I’m here, I’d also like to say a very big Thank You for all the kind and supportive words yesterday surrounding our announcement, it’s great to know we have such a positive and loyal customer base. Someday very soon we’ll be opening up a forum where you guys can all get together and meet up :)

Chris

Director
Brightpearl

Tags: ,
Posted in Customers, New features, System & service news | 2 Comments »

Pearl is now Brightpearl! Posted on June 24th, 2010 by Chris Tanner

We’ve got some pretty exciting news for you today- Pearl is now Brightpearl! www.thisispearl.com has always been confusing for customers – we’re not “this is Pearl” ! We would have loved to buy pearl.com but that was well over $800,000 – hardly pocket money even for a global corpoconglomeration like us.

So, we have changed our name to Brightpearl, launched a new website, and even managed to release a new raft of features to help you run your business better.

Those of you that have known us for a while will probably have noticed a fair bit of change happening back at HQ. We’ve doubled our office space and added 7 full time team members in the past few weeks, as well as continuing to see lots of new users really getting to grips with their Brightpearl accounts.

We’ve been talking to a fair few of you over the past few months as we learn more about what works well, and what doesn’t. We want to do more of what works well :)

We’ve been working heavily on some new database structures behind the scenes, which will open up all kinds of stock control improvements … more news on that in the near future.

Exciting times ahead, it’s great to have you all along for the ride.

Posted in Customers, General posts | 4 Comments »

Pearl and Googlemail working in perfect harmony Posted on May 6th, 2010 by Chris Tanner

Finally, a world beating CRM integration for Googlemail.

We’ve worked with the guys over at Rapportive to bring you a first in Web 2.0 business integration – full two way data transfer between your Pearl business management system and your Googlemail inbox.

  • Access contact quotes, notes, sales and financial history all from within your Gmail account.
  • Add notes to a contact and update their status, all without leaving your inbox.
  • Your web based accounting solution running tightly with your email. Now that’s hot.
  • Save time, and make sure you’re up to speed with your colleagues!

Watch the video

Gmail CRM integration

Of course, email integration doesn’t stop there. You can set up your Pearl account to send all outgoing email via your Google server, so that emails sent from within Pearl appear in your Gmail conversations. You can add filters to your Gmail account so that all incoming emails (from you AND all your colleagues) are copied into the contact timeline in Pearl, so you can be sure you’re working with the most up to date information. Read how it all works.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Customers, New features, System & service news | 1 Comment »

We've updated the Pearl email dropbox! Posted on February 22nd, 2010 by Chris Tanner

You can use your Pearl email dropbox to keep a copy of all communications on the relevant contact timeline, whichever email software you use.  That’s really handy if you need to access a full contact history, or need to share information between team members without CC-ing everyone all the time.

Back in the early days of 2009 you had to set up a separate dropbox email account that Pearl connected to, and copied all the emails over. Now it’s much, much simpler.

All you need to do is CC or FWD to your dropbox email address. That’s it! Nothing to set up.

Find your dropbox email address at Setup:Options:Contacts. For detailed information on the dropbox system, read more here. Email is a fickle beast, and we’ve tested the system on as many different email clients as we can get our hands on, from Hotmail through Thunderbird, Mac, PC, Linux… but if you spot emails not coming through, then please let us know via the Pearl helpdesk. Thank you :)

If you’re using the old dropbox method, please note that we will be turning this off on the 1st of March, so make sure you get into the habit of using your new one soon!

Tags: , ,
Posted in Customers, New features, System & service news | No Comments »

More video support Posted on February 7th, 2010 by Chris Tanner

We’ve updated our video support, and added a few more for you. Don’t forget that you can subscribe to our YouTube channel!

importProductsSave time by bulk-uploading products

You can also use the Data manager to update product parameters like weight, web enabled, price etc.

Import from Excel to make data management quick and simple.
leadsFollowing up sales leads

A guideline procedure for following up new leads that arrive in your CRM, using the Pearl timeline.
reportsThe Pearl Report Centre

Exploring some of the features of the Report centre. Filter, view or export to Excel and PDF.
stockControlStock control in Pearl

An overview of the Basic stock control module in Pearl. Create an item, add some into stock, and then sell some on a sales order.
templatesQuote, Invoice and extra templates

Create and use extra document templates for a sale – in this example we look at creating a “request for payment” document and send it off to a client.
weeblyAdd a Smartform to a Weebly website

Need a website fast? Weebly offers an excellent way to get started, and with an embedded Pearl smartform all your new contacts will appear automatically in your contact management system.

Posted in Customers, Design, General posts | No Comments »

WordPress CRM / Contact form plugin Posted on January 5th, 2010 by Chris Tanner

If you run a WordPress blog or website, then you’ve probably got a “contact us” page to capture new leads. Excellent, that’s a great start. But what happens to those leads that come in from your site? You probably get an email sent to you, which you filter, respond to and then wait for a reply. You’re probably pretty busy, so if they don’t get back to you, then it’s unlikely that it’s going to turn into a deal.

How handy would it be if all your website contact form submissions appeared magically in a contact management system, with all the relevant information already filled out for you? Even better, let’s send the visitor a welcome email, perhaps even instructions for the next step that they should take. When you have time,  you visit your system, pick up the leads, and immediately you have all the information you need in front of you. If they’ve contacted you or bought from you before, then it’s easy to see what’s going on, who’s spoken to them and what their relationship is with your company.

It’s really easy to keep your new lead stack under control.

Just install the Pearl plugin for WordPress, and your contacts will be captured directly into the CRM software. The plugin is a really simple, yet uber-powerful tool, available from WordPress here. It inserts a Pearl Smartform into your blog or website, which you control from within your Pearl account.

Some of the awesome features are:

  • Tag incoming contacts
  • Assign contacts to staff members
  • Send an automated email reply
  • Send an SMS to yourself or a team of staff members
  • Trigger emails to yourself or your team
  • Add as many fields as you need, including custom fields
  • Set “required” options
  • Add as many different forms as you need to your site

Want more information? Visit our WordPress plugin page now.

Smartform on your WordPress site

Smartform on your WordPress site

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Customers, General posts, New features, System & service news | No Comments »

Viva la Gravatar Posted on December 17th, 2009 by Chris Tanner
CRM Avatars

CRM Avatars

So you’re talking to a client on the phone, or you’re working through a stack of business cards that you picked up from your last networking meeting. Ka-ping! Up pops a little picture of them in your CRM system to remind you who they are.

We’re now connecting into Gravatar to show people’s photos within your Pearl application.

Gravatar is a free service that allows you to upload, edit and publish a picture of yourself that will then automatically show on blog comments, and many other social media sites where you might want to have an identity.

Gravatar

Gravatar

It’s little things like this that really start to show how cloud computing sits in a different space from the traditional old installed applications. We’ve got Twitter and Linked-in information coming soon, hot off the web, live and direct into your CRM screens. You might want to have a look at our WordPress and Eventbrite integrations too.

Is this an intrusion of privacy? No, not at all. It’s a service for web users to publish a global, consistent face without the need to manage multiple logins, different accounts and preferences.

Business is better when it’s personal. Pop along to Gravatar now to set yours up!

Turn on avatars in Pearl at Setup:Options:Contacts.

Posted in Customers, New features, System & service news | No Comments »

Eventbrite CRM integration with Pearl Posted on December 17th, 2009 by Chris Tanner
Eventbrite crm integration

Eventbrite crm integration

eventbrite

We’re really excited to announce the latest mashup we’ve built – a really powerful integration with Eventbrite event management software.

Now, with just a few clicks, you can import your attendee list into Pearl online CRM, including your event questions and answers, booking information and ticket numbers. Once you’ve got your contacts in CRM, you can then make use of our other powerful tools, like Mailchimp integration and SMS messaging.

Watch the 2 minute video now!

Posted in Customers, General posts, New features, System & service news | No Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »