As my colleague was turning the office upside down looking for a USB lead adapter specific to a particular brand of kit, I asked myself for the millionth time why there aren’t universal standards in such fields. I’m talking camera memory cards, phone chargers and the like. The computer industry has long recognised this and USB has become a standard interface used the world over. I guess I can say goodbye to the rather large cardboard box I have in the garage full of obsolete adapters, leads and cables, not to mention the bag full of mobile phone chargers which I have amassed.

It’s not only separate companies using their own system –in my household we have two Blackberries and the chargers are non-compatible. That simply makes no sense whatsoever.

Whilst initially I am sure each company benefits from the situation by obliging customers to stick to their own products, this has also had adverse results - I as a consumer have avoided certain products as their own accessory range was exclusively unique to them. Mentioning no names, I am of course talking about Sony digital cameras which insist on using their own format SD memory cards thereby rendering any cards you may have from a previous device wholly incompatible unless you have been “Sony for life”.

A quick search for “universal phone chargers” in your favourite search engine shows you that the industry decides to create a universal charger with frightening regularity. It always seems to be lurking on the agenda somewhere but is never actually implemented. Apparently this device is “due for imminent launch” - as it was in an article from 2007 I read recently - so I personally won’t be holding my breath.

How does this relate to us? Well we like to think our hosted CRM solution can be used as a universal adapter to suit your business management requirements. As a web based solution you forego the need to invest in in hardware or software and whether you have 1 user or 1000 using 2 or 25 modules we are able to help you out without the need for any interface or interim solution.

I may be stating the obvious when I say that your CRM software is only going to be as good as the person using it. This may well mean retraining your habits - for example saving documents into OpenCRM rather than to your pc. I know people are generally hostile to change especially when a system appears to be doing fine just as it is, but with a few minor adjustments OpenCRM can help streamline your workload and make your days’ work achieve more results.

Here are 10 suggestions to help you get more out of your daily use of your web based CRM solution:

1. Instead of making notes on post-its, create notifications or activities for yourself.

2. Use the ability to send yourself messages to your OpenCRM system to mail yourself reminders from your smartphone to catch that idea you had just before going to bed.

3. Send colleagues and clients notifications with links to any new interesting or relevant documents you have created.

4. Use the calendar tool to set yourself reminders for tasks that may otherwise go under your radar.

5. Enter any new information relating to leads, companies or contacts immediately rather than saving it for the end of the day or week.

6. Explore additional settings – the chances are that the tool you wish was featured in OpenCRM is already there!

7. Use the contact management and linking tools that are at your disposal – ensure that contacts are linked to appropriate companies, projects and so on. You may know who belongs where but this is invaluable information you can share across your organisation.

8. Enter as much information as possible. There are bound to be details which will prove invaluable at some later stage.

9. Use the custom view tools to set pages to show as much information as possible that is relevant to you. You can set yourself a custom view on each page and with practise you should quickly find views that help you to maximise the efficiency of your working day.

10. Do not delete items when you are finished with them! Changing the status of an Activity, for example, to "Done" will mean it is no longer visible on your “to do” view, but the information – which will no doubt come in handy at some point in the future, is still held in the system to be retrieved at any time.

This is just a quick update, on the off chance that someone else is out there, using the iPhone app for WordPress, and wants to know how you add the 'more tag' (thats the icon that inserts the Read More link and is available on the text editor, its the icon that looks like a page split in half), from the iPhone interface?

I have this problem because I frame my blog on a couple of other sites and (quite frankly) who am I kidding if I think people are actually interested in the drivel that I sometimes (some might say all of the time) write, so I wanted a way to reduce the text to a summary, with a link to the full article.

This is what I mean...As I mentioned above, this is straight forward from the full editor, you just select the icon, but from the iPhone interface, this is not available, or at least that's what I thought!

If you type, at the required point, the following text (its literal, because this being a WordPress blog article, it would otherwise put the Read More link instead of the example... if you see what I mean!)

<exclamation--more--> so instead of the word exclamation, replace this with the ! character (got it?)

Note - just in case the TWO dashes ( that's - - but with no space between them) have been turned into a single dash [html characters and all that] this is TWO dashes not one. Either side of the word more.

This then breaks the article at this point, with the text Read the rest of this article >>

If you, like me, need to do this, I hope this has helped.

Well, I normally don't 'go it alone' and review phones, but as a self confessed iPhone 'freak' I thought I should take a look at the Blackberry Bold to see what I was missing!

Actually, I had a conversation with David Terrar (http://www.biztwozero.com/) and he has done a review for his own blog and was telling me how the Bold was 'better'. Now once I got over the 'as if' attitude that anyone knocking the iPhone normally brings out in me, I thought, well, lets take a look.

I got hold of a Bold for a couple of days, so first, the declaration that I did not use the Bold for a prolonged period of time and it did take me a few days to get 'used' to my first iPhone (Oh how I remember the days).

I think the size of the Bold is OK, a bit chunkier to hold, but, not bad, feels good in the hand. In fairness I have to have a case on my iPhone, just to protect it - not because its easily damaged, but because I love it so much!

In short (yes I know I said review, but comment is more to the point) I think I agree with everything that most industry pundits are saying, the Bold is great, and if you don't need a *real* web browser option, and perhaps want to do some copy and paste functions (I don't, but then the iPhone does not do this, so that might explain this), with creation of documents at the top of your list, then its a good choice, however, the iPhone just does SUCH a better job if you need to browse, well not just a better job, but, a PROPER job.

So, if you want to use your OpenCRM solution, on the hoof (so to speak), then get yourself an iPhone, its just what you need.

I actually do not create long documents whilst I am on the move and if I do, then I use one of the AppStore applications for text creation and email the text to myself for formatting at my desk, and I would find it difficult to do anything else as the format of our documents has to follow a specific format, with headings and colours and we link these to OpenCRM for distribution and document management.

Oh, by the way, yes, the keyboard is good and if you like the physical keyboard type, the BB is for you, but the virtual keyboard is fine by me, I am not as quick at this typing lark anyway, so I am not interested in the max clicks per second that one BB Bold review spouted (not David' I hasten to add), I just don't think that fast, so iPhone or BB Bold makes no difference to me, its just preference.

Sales Pitch -If you want a mobile device that you can use with OpenCRM or any other web site for that matter, iPhone wins (in my opinion) hands down. But BB Bold is a good mobile, if browsing is not your main use for the device. Oh, and by the way, watch this space as the Google Android OS is going to be the big contender, especially as we have a team of 'traditional' web developers who can all write applications straight out of the box!