Daylite for Mac

Opmerkingen: I am able to provide a variety of design services with different workflows to my clients. I use it to manage my solo business, so Daylite is my only "assistant", so with my pipelines and activity sets established, it tells me what to do and when to do it. I am vigilant about my Daylite meeting time, and it helps me establish the goals for the week in manageable bites. The more detailed I am in the set up of my pipelines, the more effective Daylite is in helping me manage projects. All the linking features make it easy to get a snapshot of my jobs including emails, tasks, goals, key players.

Pluspunten: I love that I can use project management, task management, contact management and scheduling all in one. I also love the linking capabilities and its interface with my emails. I can go through email and assign every email to a project, task and determine a date to accomplish the task. I use the pipelines and activity sets to get better and better at my workflows. The longer I use and develop daylite to fit my work, the better I get at my job and my ability to replicate successful projects.

Minpunten: The downsides occurred in the beginning when I had to learn the platform and spend time setting it up. It took a while and several tries before it caught on. Once I learned it and a lot of the nuances, I got to a point where I am afraid I could not live with out it. I am sure there are features I don't use or know about, so I appreciate that Daylite support is proactive about training with the informative videos and support outreach. There have been some glitches here and there, but the customer support team has always helped work through those and get things on track.

Opmerkingen: 1. My primary contact list, especially for business associates and friends​ globally from my working life.
2. List of domestic service providers with all relevant data such as contact details, account numbers etc. I have created forms as records of vehicle and equipment maintenance. All these can be linked including receipts imported as pdfs.
3. Domestic and community project management where suppliers, venues, resources, tasks, schedules/pipelines and receipts are linked.

Pluspunten: Almost infinitely customisable fields, keywords etc. for fast data search and smart lists.
A CRM database, with the added functions of project management and data forms.
Automatic copying of e-mails to companies and people​.
Ability to telephone from the app.
Ability to create templates and forms.
Linking of people, companies, tasks, correspondence​ and files such as receipts to a project, for example.
Not enough time to list all its amazing features!

Minpunten: Daylite is aimed at the corporate market. The switch to subscription service will sooner or later make it unaffordable for me as a retiree using Daylite for non-commercial personal and community projects. Marketcircle really should offer​ a lower cost version for personal use.
Because Daylite is so highly customisable, you need to have a very clear idea of what data you need and how you will use it before starting. However, once you have it set-up to your liking it is intuitive and simple with the aid of templates and forms etc.

Opmerkingen: I want to love Daylite. If the reporting were more robust, I would be THRILLED to stick with it. But without reporting and analysis, it is more like a glorified Contact Manager, Appointment Calendar and Task List--which is why my staff loves it. Unfortunately, I need business intelligence, and Daylite doesn't provide that.

Pluspunten: It lives on the Mac desktop, like a "real" business application; not on a browser where it is too easy to get distracted. Awesome. It works on Mac. Excellent. It takes some forethought to get it set up, but once set up it is flexible enough to handle unique needs. I initially loved that. Activity Sets automatically create Meetings and Tasks based on date (but there are huge problems, noted below). Daylite does an excellent job of tracking individual events for each Person.

Minpunten: While Activity Sets do a good job of creating a series of upcoming Meetings and Tasks, Daylite has no idea that these "events" must exist in series. A meeting is a meeting is a meeting and a Task is a Task is a Task. This makes reporting next to impossible... Daylite cannot generate a report of how many People made it to one Meeting, but not to the next Meeting. It cannot tell me how many Phone Calls (each entered as a separate Task), for example, were made to a Lead before they came in for that first meeting. Daylite uses Categories to keep track of People. A Person might begin with a category of 'Lead', then change to a category of 'Client', then have category 'Completed'. (We actually had 5 primary categories, each with subcategories to help us understand each client) The problem is that there is no history. Reporting, again, is nearly impossible: Daylite can give raw counts: How many People were added in the last 7 days? How many Leads do we now have? Etc. But these reports are a snapshot of current data. Once a Person moves to the next Category, I can no longer get an accurate report of: How many new leads were added last week? What is our conversion ratio? How long did they exist as Leads? The Report Module is very limited. Custom Reporting is available but requires a 3rd party programmer. Piplelines proved too clunky.

Opmerkingen: Already described

Pluspunten: Daylite doesn't seem to differentiate between B2B or B2C. You can add appointments, tasks, notes, email, pipelines, etc to people, or businesses. You can add single tasks, activity sets (groups of tasks, appointments etc) or pipelines (stages with groups of tasks, appointments etc. within each stage). Whether you are managing a sales cycle or a project, data entry is minimal. I love that with one click, all our carefully considered steps can be applied to any situation, whether it's a sales cycle or the projects that result from a sale. Combinations are possible and I'm confident that no step is overlooked or omitted and they pop up at exactly the right time. Customization of the task list or pipeline task set is also possible "on the fly". Their service is unbelievable. I haven't had a lot of interaction with Daylite support over the 12 years I've been using Daylite, but the followup I recently received for questions I had offered service at a level to which I would like to become accustomed! I had support sending me emails some days later asking if everything was okay - not an automated survey question, but someone in support that actually cares! When do you ever get that level of service? A big thank you!

Minpunten: I don't use Opportunities for prospects since it's not possible to convert an Opportunity (and everything recorded & saved) to a Contact. I set up any prospect as a full contact then tag them with a category of Prospect. I then set up a smart list that displays all contacts that have a category of Prospects. Also, it would be great if PC users could access Daylite too. Not everyone on the team uses a Mac.

Opmerkingen: It's the most fully integrated software that allows me to manage all aspects of my business (less accounting). I love the integrated functions of; Calendar, Task Management, Project Management, Sales Opportunity Tracking, Data collection and analysis, robust Contact Management. These features, combined with the email integration piece, allows me to quickly turn an email into a; Task, Calendar event, note, idea, or just save to an associated project, opportunity, company or individual file. Daylite is an indispensable part of my day and essential to running and growing my business.

Pluspunten: Daylite allows me to integrate all aspects of my day into two portals (email & Daylite). Daylite email integration, combined with (Calendar, Tasks, Team, Projects, Opportunities, Forms, et al) allows me to work inside one interface for all my needs. The email integration is my favorite piece. I can action any email for a thought, idea, task, appointment, note and numerous other uses, without having to copy/paste, forward or otherwise transfer information. Instead of managing multiple softwares (Outlook, Project, Sales Force, etc) I can follow pipelines, workflows, activity sets, and send merged mailings all from one portal, tracked to each person or company. I am a HUGE Fan.

Minpunten: The only functionality I could ask for is to integrate an email app into Daylite which would make the process complete. Other than that, Daylite Cloud has been indispensable to running my business, managing my team, and growing revenue.