GoldMine has been used by the whole team since we started the company back in 1998. Originally, I had used it from 1996 when the first Windows version was released. It is used by Sales, Customer Service and our consultancy team to manage all activities with clients and prospects. Finance use it to chase up clients and to understand if there are any sensitive issues they need to be aware of. In my view, it was probably the first real integrated CRM system.
A tough question. Nowadays, there is a host to CRM systems to choose from and I suspect, the availability of CRM on-the-road would be a critically important question, especially usage on tablets so I could update and have to come in and start up the laptop each night!
But, here is the rub, when I'm using it, it needs to be fast and quick to enable me to move to the next call or find the next record. This all helps my productivity and I'm sure is critical to success in building a business and for any sales people on the road a lot.
As previously, try not to overcomplicate in the early days. Only apply those key customisation that are needed and will be updated by your users. If they don't either see the value or understand why something is important to update, they won't and that will impact on your marketing and segmentation report building. My mantra is 'less is more'
We do use to track Serial Numbers for Software and use the details tab to record all licence details ,since we can add to this each time and hold multiple licence details. It is quite a useful tab as it can be expanded out to create its own tabs and nowadays you can display which ever tabs, standard and custom you want.
This is a tough one, but we did have one instance where the US support team dialled-in to troubleshoot and then fix a problem for us over a few weeks which was great. Again, this goes back around 3 years so the detail escapes me,but think it was to do with non-standard access via Citrix or a Terminal Server issue and not a general GoldMine issue.