We’ve run this survey every year since 2008, so we’ll be able to compare the results with previous years’ to see the emerging trend. You can take a look at the the 2011 survey results here.

As usual, we’re offering a case of six bottles of Chablis in a draw to anyone who completes the survey. Or if you don’t like wine and you win, we’ll substitute something else.

Please go right ahead and take the survey now.

Ever since we launched our online CRM system back in 2006, it was obvious that the main barrier to people getting started with CRM for the first time was getting their data loaded. No matter how many videos or help pages we produced, first time users were not used to the concept of getting their data into a csv file with the right column headings, and then uploading it only to find that their data was rejected because they had invalid email addresses.

Which is why we simply say to to customers, if you’re having difficulty importing your data, just email it to our friendly support team and we’ll upload it for you for free.

So with six years of experience in loading customers’ data, we have now created some ground-breaking software that looks at a customer’s data file and works out for itself what the data is, without the need for the user to change the file contents.

We look at the column headings, if there are any, and see if that gives us a clue as to what the data is. If there aren’t any column headings, we look at the data itself. All the fields have an @ sign in them? Probably an email address. The fields all start with “www”? Must be a web site. And so on, with pattern recognition for telephone numbers and post/zip codes.

And then, and this is the really clever bit, the system learns from previous imports and so teaches itself to make better assumptions.

The whole project very much fits into our core mission of making CRM simpler, so that more people can get value from the technology.

The new data import routine is now available to all new customers, and will be released to existing customers after the beta test is complete in a couple of weeks’ time.

Unlike most industry awards, the Software Satisfaction Awards are awarded purely on feedback from users – in other words, you!

We won the Best Small Business CRM System in 2010 and 2008, and came runner up in 2011 and 2009. If you vote for us, maybe we can win again in 2012!

Voting is now open and closes at on Friday 29 June 2012 at 17:00, UK time.

Firstly, the unmissably vitriolic resignation of a Goldman Sachs director who stated that his erstwhile employers offloaded poor value investments to their “muppet” customers.

Next, Oracle’s latest financial results came under repeated scrutiny as analysts noticed that the revenue increases where down to gouging their existing customer base rather than selling new product to new customers.

The same was true for SAP, accused of less than transparent pricing as it went “elephant hunting” looking for large deals.

Even the almighty Apple’s new iPad launch came in for some less-than-valedictory coverage, Google was slammed for not paying its Android developers and Groupon was given three months to get honest.

The common theme across the Goldman, Oracle and SAP stories is that traditional market leaders  are having difficulty keeping the revenue growth up from new business, and are being driven to more desparate ways to make their numbers. A sure sign of the end of a software company is when maintenance revenues exceed licence revenues, and both Oracle and SAP are heading in that direction.

Time for a new breed of cloud computing vendors to take over, maybe?

The reason that we maintain two data centres is for uptime. When both are running we can load balance our CRM customers across the two instances. If one data centre has a power or Internet outage (and all data centres do have about one a year) we can fail over to the other data centre. where all the data is mirrored in real time.

We’ll be moving our Manchester servers to Fareham this week end, ready for Monday morning. During this time the CRM system will continue  running in Maidenhead. We don’t expect any service dislocation during this period.

Our thanks to the Elaine and team at Hello Scotland.

We won the Award for Best Small Business CRM System in 2008 and 2010, with second places in 2009 and 2011. On that basis, we’re due to win it again in 2012!

The competition kicks off on 1st May with the final winners announced on 18th October.

If you’re wondering what all the fuss is about Cloud Computing, online applications and Software-as-a-Service, then come along and hear first hand in a non-sales based forum from a variety of speakers, both practitioners and users of cloud services.

There will be question and answer sessions too.

The Seminar is free and you can sign up by emailing Intellect and saying you would like to attend.

Now to be fair, not everyone that signs up sticks with our online CRM. Some people are “just looking” and disappear almost as quickly as they signed up. But over 5,000 users are now using our Free Edition every day, and almost 500 have upgraded to our paid-for version, Premium Edition.

Good thing we have two more servers to rack this week!

As well as us there will be independent analysts and customers talking about their experiences with online applications.

If you want to know what all the fuss is about Cloud Computing, come along for half a day (it starts at 15:00). Just drop us a note if you want to come (their registration from isn’t up yet).