Using BatchBook for Managing Family Information
- Posted August 16th, 2010
- Filed under: How We Do It, Using BatchBook
Several people sent me the link to NYC VC Fred Wilson’s blog post in which he asks his readership for suggestions for a “Family CRM” service. He explains that he and his wife Joanne Wilson a.k.a Gotham Gal are looking for a way to share basic contact/calendar information, build some e-mail lists for social correspondence, planning and general family-managing.
In the thread, a few BatchBook customers recommended our CRM BatchBook (thanks Boris, Sri, Stefano and Sandro!), so I’d talk about how I use my BatchBook account to help manage my busy family.
First, I should explain that BatchBook was not designed for managing families, but it WAS designed for those small businesses that are about the same size, shape and energy level of an on-the-go family. I think the folks who recommended us recognize that the flexibility of BatchBook makes it work for all sorts of situations, including the work/life balancing (or is it juggling?) act that we small business owners face every day. As we know all too well, the line between business owner and family member frequently blurs.
My other co-founders and I started BatchBlue so that we could build a business deeply integrated with our family lives (I have three small children; they have two). Part of the solution for me has been using a personal BatchBook account to manage my family life. Here’s how I do it:
- I use my personal BatchBook account for my holiday mailing list, I’ve created a separate record for each person in a couple and link them with a “spouse” affiliation. I also created a field for how I want to address the collective them – ie “Dr. and Mrs. Allen” for my best friend’s older parents vs. “Sean Ransom & Michelle Riggen-Ransom” for my modern dual-name friends. I also created a field for their kids names so I can include them in the addressing.
- I’ve created tags for #doctor (which includes custom fields for hospitals & medications – my son has medical issues), #poker (my husband organizes a monthly game), #house (I seem to always call the plumber from the road), #holiday list, #teachers (with comments for gifts given so I don’t duplicate as multiple kids go through the same classes), #coach (same as teachers), #travel (my sister and I plan our family’s annual vacation so I’m usually dealing with hotels, house rentals, etc.)
- I am now the official keeper of my extended family’s official birthday and anniversary list, so I’ve created custom date fields for birthdays and anniversaries. My husband and I share a Google calendar and events I create from these dates automatically feed to it.
- I don’t keep my daily task list in BatchBook, but I do add events for recitals, performances, doctors appointments, etc. that feeds into my professional and my husband’s calendars.
- If I wanted to I could see my friends’ and families’ most recent Tweets, Flickr images, blog posts, etc. from within BatchBook, but honestly I don’t use this feature much in my personal account. These are all the same people I have on my special private Twitter list and I tend to keep up over there.
- I keep these all synced to my Android (and before that Blackberry) through Gmail. There is also a mobile version of BatchBook, and we are working to release native apps for the iPhone and Android soon.
My favorite criteria listed in the comments of Fred’s post (from wife Gotham Gal) is that the application they need should be built by a mom (we have a lot of those at BatchBlue, though we would add that a busy Dad’s probably just fine too!)
When it comes down to it, running a family is about managing relationships. No need to pie chart the likelihood of closing the deal, or dole out sales scripts to new employees. Just give me my son’s last prescription data when I need it, help me manage three different soccer schedules and keep me in good graces with my elderly Southern relatives who expect to hear from me no matter how busy I might be with work. Thanks to BatchBook, all that I can do.
This is really helpful, thanks. I have a couple needs that your approach doesn’t quite meet. I’ve shared some of these thoughts on BB forums, but happened to be googling for a better way to do one of these things and presto, your post popped up. So:
1. Using a spouse affiliation still requires that you enter the same shared address info 2x (and update both if changes). This includes landline, often 2nd home address, all kinds of things that really just need to be entered 1x and shared w/ multiple individuals (or leave it off 1 spouse and navigate to other to get info, which is unwieldy). Lo! BB already has a “Company” feature that handles this perfectly, by sharing common info re Companies w/ multiple people who work there. It would be so excellent to have a separate “Family” feature that works the same way. I can’t use the existing Company feature for Family info, b/c most of the individuals also have Company info that I need.
2. Add-on field for kids doesn’t quite work for us. Many of our kids’ friends have cell phones and emails that we need routinely, I want them to be their own individual listings. Yes, we could do that with affiliate feature, like you’re dong w/ spouses, but that turns double entry into triple-or-more entry. Again a “Family” feature would solve this.
3. You use a separate BB file for personal info, ya? If we had the ability to enter but *not share* personal info in our BB *business* account, we could each dump all of the personal contacts into a single BB account, rather than setting up 2 BB accounts per person. Among other things, we have more personal contacts than the free BB app permits, we’re already paying for a business account, and it doesn’t make sense to pay for a 2nd BB account for each person, much more efficient to have 1 account and ability to hide personal info fr business colleagues.
Thanks for your insight. BB is a wonderful product, w/ a few of these glaring omissions.
Alex
Hi Alex –
Thanks for the message and the kind words. Yes, I’m afraid you have unearthed some of the shortcomings of BatchBook as an “FRM”. We have talked about implementing a “family” affiliation similar to the company affiliation, that would allow you to attach multiple individuals to the same “home” location. This is not in the development schedule currently, though does tend to come up around holiday time each year.
And you make a good point on the shared account. You can use the “basic user” permission level to restrict access to contacts within your account, but you may not want to do that on the business side, since you will need to proactively grant access to all of the shared professional contacts. I think every BatchBlue employee has his/her own personal account, many of which are used for side projects/organizations (entrepreneurs are an ADD bunch!). We’ll have to brainstorm some more on a better way to share the contacts that should be shared.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you have more suggestions!.
- Pamela
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