Has it Been a Year Already? What’s New at Tall Emu in 2025
A Year Since Taking Back Tall Emu from MYOB
On 16th September last year, I took ownership of Tall Emu back from MYOB. One of our clients said I was a “madman” for doing so – sometimes I think he was right!
Nevertheless, the last almost-year has been great, it’s been wonderful getting back in contact with customers (a few stopped in for a visit, or a beer) – and great to have Tall Emu back under my control.
I would very much like to thank all the clients that stuck with us while we got ourselves sorted out. We still have a long way to go before Tall Emu matches my vision for it – but we’re making steps in the right direction.
Improving Customer Support, Onboarding and CRM Customisation
For new customers, we’ve changed onboarding to be 10 hours of handholding and support, instead of a mere 2 hours. For all customers, it’s now possible to purchase a managed support agreement which gives you up to 4 hours of “work” from us every month, as well as the ability to get phone support.
Also, we’ve restored our CRM customisation service. One size does not fit all, and we’ve done some great customisation projects for a variety of customers in the last year.
One of the best parts of being back in control of Tall Emu has been the ability to fly myself out to visit some of our regional customers. It’s made a real difference – proper site visits, face-to-face strategy chats, and a better feel for how Tall Emu’s being used out in the real world. If you’re regional and reckon a visit could help, drop me a note – I might just fly out to see you.
Product Changes. New Tall Emu Features: CRM Automation, Phone Integration and More
Since I got the business back, we’ve woken up our CRM development roadmap – cleaning up bugs, oversights, minor inconveniences. Just today we released an update that includes colour coding on the calendar to make it easier to use, one of a large variety of cosmetic tweaks designed to make the product simpler to navigate, but more powerful for our users, like payment surcharges.
Aside from those features, we’ve released the first version of our CRM automations engine, which allows you to configure things like “if this happens, then do this” to automate repetitive tasks. We’ve also released a powerful phone integration that not only alerts you on calls, but records them, transcribes and summarises them and pops them into CRM.
Finally, we removed the mandatory “swear filter” on our audio-note taking and made it optional. This perhaps would have been more useful last year when the wheels were off.
What’s Coming Next for Tall Emu?
The one thing that everyone is short of is time – and our goal is to help you save time and grow your business. We can save you time by centralising data in CRM, by summarising it, by automating activities based on it, and by automating the creating of it. Even as simply as improving the usability of areas of the CRM.
Some of the things we’ll be working on:
- Automation Engine – Making it more powerful, so that you’re able to automate more business processes, from web leads to ordering.
- Improved Calendar – Integration with Outlook, Gmail, and consolidation of the calendar function over CRM.
- Email Centralisation/Sales Inbox – Work your email directly inside CRM, either your personal email or shared functional email boxes like sales or support.
- AI Assistant – An interactive tool that not only answers questions, but can also do things for you, such as bulk customer updates, quote preparation and more.
- Record Summarisation – The ability to see a summary of interactions on a particular opportunity, project, or support ticket.
Everyone’s talking about AI – and there’s a lot of unbelievable hype – but I firmly believe that AI can be used to help small businesses, as demonstrated by our automated transcription and summary of phone calls.
Imagine a CRM that does it for you. Every call logged, summarised. Every customer interaction by email, or customer web-meeting automatically documented. This gives you a massive database of information unheard of, and able to be queried, analysed and acted on – by you, AI, or the automations engine.
We’re Raising Investment.
Before the MYOB acquisition, we had planned to raise capital to accelerate our development and grow our customer base. Now that we’re independent again and the ship is steady, it’s time to pick that back up.
The reasoning is simple – investment will allow us to expand our team; more developers, more support, more.. everything.. and this will fast-track our roadmap.
I know how fast small businesses can change when acquired or backed by “grow-at-all-costs” venture funds. That’s why this time, I’ve decided to raise through crowdfunding so we can grow with our community, without losing control, focus, or our soul.
If you’re a long-time supporter, a customer, or someone who simply believes in the potential of what we’re building, this is your chance to own a piece of Tall Emu and help build the future.
This isn’t a Kickstarter where you get a beanie and a thank-you note. This is a real investment opportunity where you’ll own a slice of the business. Stand-by for more information and how you could get involved.
So, there you have it, that’s where we’re at. It’s been a big 12 months, and there’s plenty more to do. If you’re a customer, thanks again for sticking with us. And if you’re interested in what we’re building (or owning a little bit of it), now’s a good time to jump in.
Cheers,
Mike