We’ve spent the early part of this month painting, painting and a little more painting of the two new floors of heavenly blueness that is now BatchHaus, the new home of the @batchblue crew. We’re still in the same eclectic Providence neighborhood that we’ve called our “communal space for the virtual team” for the past few years. But with five new hires in the past four months, we had outgrown the part-time meeting space and needed a proper office.
We found the perfect new home for our growing BatchFamily in the top two floors of a large brick Tudor home turned cloud-computing idea factory. Luckily, it just happens to be across the street from the local Starbucks, around the corner from The Edge cafe and near one of our favorite restaurants Red Stripe. Plenty of caffeine and good food to keep us motivated!
Co-working Thursdays at the BatchHaüs
To keep the same informal, tech-talking, coffee-sharing vibe that our virtual team has grown accustomed to, we’re opening up the new BatchHaüs common room as a co-working space for any local designers, entrepreneurs or other engaging geeks who care to join us once a week for some co-working action. We launched our first co-working day last Thursday and were thrilled to have local cultural leaders and fashion icons TJ Sondermann (@tsondermann), Anisa Raoof (@kidoinfo), Allan Tear (@aptuscollab), Jen Robbins (@jenville) and Jan Dane (from @tizra) join us for the inaugural event. Yummy Seven Stars pastries were enjoyed by all thanks to Jan!
Though we will always be a virtual company at heart, we’re excited to be putting down a few more roots and growing into our new home-away-from-the-home-office. Pam Slim wrote a great article explaining that her move into an off-site office was a dream come true. We could not agree more!
BatchBlue invites anyone who wants to share in our entrepreneurial adventures to stop by the BatchHaus at 10 Elmgrove Ave (2nd floor) on any given Thursday. We’ll save a cup of joe for you. And you never know who you might meet – it could be the start (up) of a beautiful relationship.
As fans of diversity and champions of doing your own thing, BatchBlue has always loved the idea behind MOO cards, a company that lets you create business cards using your own images. Who says business cards need to be boring? Certainly not MOO, who display the many different ways their customers have used their product to create funky, artistic stand-out business and calling cards in a Flickr group.
Our new MOO cards!
BatchBlue’s latest batch of MOO cards feature Twitter quotes from some of our happy customers. What better way to show off how social our CRM BatchBook is than by displaying some of the nice things people are saying about us on Twitter!
Backstage at MOO (Providence, RI)
Since we’ve been customers for a while, we were thrilled when MOO opened an office right in our hometown of Providence, RI. A couple of weeks ago, Pam and I had a chance to stop by to say hello to our MOO Crew friends Lisa Rodwell and Rebeka Fluet and get a tour of MOO’s new(ish) facilities. If you’re a MOO fan like us, you’ll enjoy this behind-the-scenes look at what goes into making the coolest business cards around!
Thanks for the tour, guys! Keep on doing what you do.
Tell Us A Little Bit About What Your Company Does And What Services You Provide:
Junebug Weddings is an online wedding magazine featuring the award winning wedding blog, What Junebug Loves, and a Plan Your Wedding Hotlist of the best wedding professionals in Southern California and the Pacific Northwest. Our invitation only network is expanding this year to include the world’s best wedding photographers.
How Did You Get Started:
Junebug Weddings is owned by Blair deLaubenfels, Christy Weber, and Kim Bamberg. After a decade of running successful photography businesses, we decided to share what we knew about the best products and people in the wedding industry with newly engaged couples worldwide. We’re thrilled to provide inspiration and advice to stylish couples everywhere.
How Long Have You Been In Business And How Many Employees Do You Currently Have:
We’ve been in business four years, and we have six employees.
What Is Your Target Audience:
Couples with mid to high-end budgets looking to plan their wedding with serious personal style.
How Does Your Company Stay Connected With Clients And Your Business Community:
Through numerous social networks and online marketing efforts including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Mailchimp. We’re dedicated to promoting our clients in print, online, and in person.
Can You Offer Any Advice For Anyone Else Looking To Start Their Own Company:
Write a business plan. Buy every URL that could be associated with your business. Define your brand and live by it.
Is There Anything Else You Would Like To Add:
Please see our website to see how we set Junebug Weddings apart from all other online blogs, magazines, and resources.
One of my favorite new tasks here at BatchBlue is to take over the writing of the Our Users Are So Smart series of blog posts. My predecessor in this role started this series back in June of 2008 to highlight some of the great ideas and use cases that we receive from our users.
At BatchBlue we recognize (and love) that each person who chooses our software uses it in a unique way, often in scenarios we didn’t anticipate. It’s a testament to their innovation that they take the flexibility and features that are a part of BatchBook to carefully craft a workflow and environment that fits their needs.
They have also contributed some great feature requests, many of which we have implemented in to BatchBook. Here are some of my favorites
In August of 2008, Adam wrote about the addition of our Auto-BCC to BatchBox option. It seems our Forum User Dean was enjoying the convenience of our BatchBox email forwarding but suggested that it would also be great if email links from within BatchBook would automatically add the BatchBox forwarding address to your BCC field. Consider it done!
One of the handiest features of using BatchBook in a team environment is the ability to add comments to contacts and communications. What a great way to keep conversations happening. You can thank user Paul, also from our forums, for suggesting this one.
Often times, the best suggestions aren’t for huge features or changes but rather for the little things that just make your work easier. Such is the case with user Alex who really wanted to be able to easily convert an individual to a company. Just one email from him was enough to get this on our radar and implemented soon after.
A lot of our favorite suggestions have come from our User Forums so I want to take a second to remind you that we’ve just recently upgraded our systems to make them even easier to use. Feel free to jump in with your questions, comments and other feedback. We’ve got a whole section just for Feature Requests just waiting for your great ideas on how we can make BatchBook work even better for you.
And while our old forums have been retired, they are still a great resource because of all of the user feedback we’ve received there.
We hope you’ll join us in our new discussion area, or send us an email to support@batchblue.com with your ideas – we’re waiting to see how smart you are.
Here at BatchBlue we like to think of SuperTags as working similarly to the tags you are all probably familiar with, but with the extra benefit of having some really nifty super powers – namely the ability to handle any type of custom data you can throw at them.
When I started using BatchBook back in October 2007, I knew the killer feature for me was going to be SuperTags. Over the years I’ve used them to handle all sorts of data related to my contacts and clients, everything from important dates to their software licensing information.
I’ve been learning that not only are BatchBook SuperTags great at capturing client information, they can also be a great fit for storing information about me and the stuff that I need to keep track of.
Recently I had some trouble with the monitor for my computer. It’s been repaired under warranty before and I knew it was still covered so I began to gather the information I needed to call in for service:
A visit to the manufacturer web site for the phone number.
A search on the vendor site for a copy of the original invoice to verify warranty terms.
A quick crawl around the desk for the serial number.
A search in my email for the details of the last service call.
While I was running through this silly series of steps, many of which I had already done once in the past, it occurred to me that all of this info could be stored quite easily in BatchBook.
So I created a shiny new “warranty” SuperTag with custom fields for the product name, model number, serial number, place of purchase, date of purchase, and warranty expiration date.
Now when I get a new product, I can tag a company record with my new Warranty SuperTag and fill in all the juicy details. I can even print or scan a copy of the original invoice to a PDF file and uploaded it to the record so I will always have it easily available.
If I ever do need to call or arrange for service, I have all the details I need with just a quick search. I can also use the communications feature to log the call and capture details like ticket numbers and mailing instructions. Logging each call and each step of the return or repair process documents the experience should I have any trouble or if I ever need to revisit it in the future.
Taking advantage of the features built in to BatchBook has helped me tremendously in not only keeping track of the people that are important to me but a lot of other information as well. Some creative thinking about SuperTags has proven to open up a whole new world of possibilities.
We’ve spent the early part of this month painting, painting and a little more painting of the two new floors of heavenly blueness that is now BatchHaus, the new home of the @batchblue crew. We’re still in the same eclectic Providence neighborhood that we’ve called our “communal space for the virtual team” for the past few years. But with five new hires in the past four months, we had outgrown the part-time meeting space and needed a proper office.
