Ok, you have your GoldMine installed and you want to add a user.  You open up the User Settings and click ‘New’.  You fill in the desired username, full name and the password.  You also see this curious checkbox with the word ‘Master Rights’.  You are not exactly sure what this means, but you’ve heard somewhere it has to do with administering GoldMine.  What you have heard is true, but there are many more truths in life and it is these other truths that can hurt you.

Within GoldMine there is something called a Master Rights account.  This account is similar to the administrative user account in Windows NT, 2000, and XP Pro.  With Novell, it is the Supervisor account and in Linux it is the Root account.  Users that have been granted the rights these accounts carry become ‘all powerful’.  They can also become ‘all dangerous’.  The choice to grant master rights to your GoldMine users is not something to be taken lightly.

GoldMine master users are permitted access to all portions of GoldMine and can bypass any security features.  The only areas of GoldMine a master rights user cannot venture are the Personal Base of the InfoCenter and the Personal Rolodex of other users.  Everything else is wide open.  It is for this reason you should have no more master rights users within the organization than is absolutely necessary, and those that do have these rights should be clearly defined as users that genuinely need total access to GoldMine.

Master Rights Do’s:

• Do give at least one user master rights.  You need this to add users and do system administration.
• Do give master rights to ONLY those users that have a genuine need.
• Do change the passwords of master rights users frequently.
• Do change the default Master account password after GoldMine is installed.  Better yet, create a new master account under a different username and remove the original ‘MASTER’ account.

Master Rights Don’ts:

• Don’t give master rights to a user just because they are ‘the boss’.  This one can be tough to avoid, but try for the sake of your sanity.
• If you are undocking licenses for installations on remote machines, don’t undock all the user accounts available unless at least one has been granted master rights.
• Don’t give out master rights user passwords to non-master rights users.

Used wisely, GoldMine’s Master Rights can be a wonderful thing and can reduce the workload of administrators by spreading the administrative load.  Used unwisely, these rights can become one of the worst administrative nightmares you will ever encounter.

The public relations department of a firm that already owned GoldMine was in need of a solution to help them with their responsibilities.  It was by chance that they discovered that their company owned GoldMine software and sales people were already using it.  PR folks decided to take a closer look at what GoldMine could be used for, its features, etc. 

What they discovered was that GoldMine was an answer to many of their needs.  In fact, it was an ideal tool for helping to manage many of the functions that a PR department does.

Like sales, a big aspect of PR is follow up.  GoldMine gives them a better means to stay on top of their media contacts.  Its ability to merge and personalize communications into emails, letters and faxes is tremendous for them.   The InfoCenter gives them a very effective way of storing and providing access to PR communications. 

By creating a separate database (file) and limiting access to only certain GoldMine users they can keep their media contacts and information apart from the sales force and visa versa.  They can create a special “PR screen” where they can enter facts/details and notes about their various media contacts.  Then they can use this information as a way of targeting their communications.  It’s nice to have all their contacts in one central file to share within the department, so each person can see the latest information and activity regarding any media contact.

The moral of the story is that maybe GoldMine can fit the needs of another department in your organization.  What a great way to leverage your existing investment!

Here’s a little circular logic that’s worth thinking about.  Increase sales by increasing selling time by decreasing non-selling time.  It’s really very simple.  A sales guru put it this way, “Sales people should sell, and everybody else should do everything else.”  First let me explain and then I’ll tell you about a way to do this with GoldMine.

In the time it takes a salesperson to merge a boilerplate cover letter, select the print materials to go into the package, print the label or envelope, put it all together and put it in the mail, they could have made some 2, 3 or more sales calls.  So, the question is, do you pay your sales people to do clerical work (they’re so good at) or do you pay them to stay on the phone while an administrative person handles the task for a whole group of sales people? 

If you have enough sales people doing enough fulfillment each day, you should take a closer look at GoldMine’s Literature Request and Fulfillment features.  They are intended to give sales people more time to sell, by giving them a simple way to delegate literature fulfillment.

You start by creating a “pick list” within the Literature Fulfillment Center.  (Open the Literature Fulfillment Center from the “View” pull-down menu.)  You can add merge documents such as cover letters, as well as print materials that get pulled from your literature shelves.  You can include forms, labels, envelopes, etc.  By doing a good job of classifying and organizing the list, it is much easier for users to find the items they need to be fulfilled. 

After the literature list is created, users can schedule “Literature Requests” from the same drop-down menu that they use to schedule all activities.   Active users of this feature will want to add the icon/macro to their toolbar.  From the scheduling box users can select the right cover letter, if called for, and simply click off the “literature list” items.  They can indicate whether those items are routed to a printer or fax and designate the person to handle the task and when it is to be sent, can include an alarm and requesting an automatic “RSVP” confirmation when they’ve completed it.  They can even write a note about special handling instructions. 

The person who is trained to handle fulfillment will see in the Literature Fulfillment Center all the documents and requests they have outstanding and pending for that day, week, month and next month.  They can also see the jobs they’ve completed.  There are several tools in the Center to help them efficiently handle their job.

GoldMine will increase selling time and ultimately sales, if you take the time upfront to configure the Literature Fulfillment Center and learn how to use it.

This article begins with the premise that you already know what GoldMine Automated Processes (AP) are.  What you may not recognize is that one of most important GoldMine Automated Process may be the one that decides which other Automated Processes should be assigned to a record(s). Automated Processes (AP) can do a whole host of functions.  But one of the coolest things they can do is attach another Automated Process (Track). 

This allows a marketing or sales department to design an AP that can determined, based on a wide variety of “triggers,” such as field entries (dbase conditions), completed or pending activity, elapsed days or other criteria, which AP(s) need to be assigned in order to perform other functions.  The possibilities are so vast, that one can always find new ways to take advantage of this capability.  Here are but few examples to illustrate the idea:

Example #1:  If a new prospect record is added to the database with important information missing, the AP could attach a different “missing information” AP that is specifically designed to identify which fields are missing and send an email to the contact requesting that information, or schedule a follow-up action for someone inside the organization to get that information.

Example #2:  In the event of a sale, the same AP that decided to attach the “missing information” AP, could also have attached a “new customer”AP.  This AP might automatically send out a thank you note to the customer and alert customer service of a new account.

Example #3:  Leads entered into GoldMine using the Web-import capabilities can automatically have a “web import” process attached.  This process can look at the information your customer requested, based on a field they checked off, and automatically attach the appropriate “product or service AP,” specifically designed to send the prospect suitable information and schedule a follow-up activity for that assigned sales representative.

The hardest part about Automated Processes is thinking them through and designing them to be constructive, rather than counterproductive.  Anticipating and accounting for all potential scenarios requires a lot of thought.  By the same token, given all the time AP’s can save an organization, as well as how they can improve sales and service for prospects and customers, Automated Processes are well worth the effort.

So much focus is given to how GoldMine is used for sales and marketing that we sometimes overlook GoldMine’s tremendous value as an interoffice workgroup solution. 

Nearly 15 years ago, before MS Windows was even introduced, the founders and creators of GoldMine, Jon Ferrara and Elan Susser, had the vision for a workgroup contact management system, soon to be referred to as sales force automation, that would allow all the various members inside the organization to share one central database for prospects, customers, vendors, and other key contacts. 

From the start, GoldMine featured functions that would help organizations work together more effectively.  Believe it or not, ever since the DOS version, GoldMine offered task delegation, group scheduling, network-based electronic mail, document storage, a knowledge base and other functions.  These qualities have always made GoldMine stand out over other contact management systems and are some of the reasons it’s won so many awards.  In addition to helping sales and marketing, GoldMine has always offered workgroup features which are valuable to the organization at large including but not limited to the ability to:

• Track in-house interactions in relation to database records
• Capture significant facts and activities regarding these records that others need
• Document important internal and external conversation notes or instructions pertaining
• Check availability of co-workers
• Delegate scheduled follow-up pertaining to records in the database
• Notify or copy staff or management regarding aspects on records
• Offer an efficient way for multiple departments with different roles and responsibilities to share files while at the same time having options to hide or limit access to restricted information

GoldMine has always been much more than a stand-alone contact management or sales automation tool!  Working together more effectively remains vital to any organization’s success – so owners of GoldMine are smart to leverage it to help them do so.