ClinchPad: A CRM Alternative with Potential

We’ve recently introduced 50 Startups for PR and Marketing to Watch and we promised to bring you news of more attention-worthy startups in the near future. It’s time to introduce ClinchPad, an application that aims to simplify the way you manage your sales process, funnel or pipeline.

In open beta at this stage, ClinchPad already shows potential. With easy and intuitive drag-and-drop UI, the application allows you to organize your home screen (modeled like a sales pipeline) as it makes sense to you. From here, you can already perform several tasks, such as adding, deleting and editing stages and leads.

A very recent feature, “to do” lists, allows you to keep track of your actions, by adding to do items, like meetings, calls and other tasks. The feature allows you to set up a date, assign to collaborators, make notes and mark as done upon completion. This is particularly useful to follow up on leads and manage your contacts, simplifying the way you manage your customers and sales prospects. For an even clearer overview, you can add the to do list to your pipeline, in a new or already existing stage, by setting up a default list.

Further on, you can complete your leads and contacts, by attaching to each the corresponding files (documents, presentations, signed contracts, etc), to keep things neat and tidy. This eliminates the need to search for these documents outside the application.

So far, using ClinchPad is a breeze, but there are still things missing to make this a viable alternative to other CRMs out there. There is no way to import contacts and leads – it all needs to be done manually, a time consuming proposition if you work within a large company, which receives thousands of leads each day.

If you need to export your contact list, there is no way to do that either. You can create a list of contacts and organizations, manually, but you cannot import or export them automatically.

Last, but not least, there are no reporting features – an absolute must to monitor business performance, sales trends and other key metrics. But then again, ClinchPad is still in its infancy, and we can assume that these features will be added in time.