Light Blue user case study - Louise Beattie

Posted on Monday 18 April 2011

Louise Beattie, Light Blue user since June 2009, explains how it's helped streamline her business.

What were you using before you found Light Blue?

A mixture of iCal, Address Book and bits of paper. Luckily this was when my business was in its very early stages. I realised the need to have a proper system or database and came across another product aimed at photographers but never really got on with this. When I saw Light Blue I tried the demo and found that it was so much more user friendly. It was a no-brainer to make the investment and switch to Light Blue.

Why did you choose Light Blue to run your business?

For many reasons. It is very user friendly, it is easy on the eye - it looks well designed and is easy to find information. It is incredibly powerful and has just about every feature that I need to run and manage my photography business in a way that frees me to think about the important things such as looking after my clients, growing and developing my business.

How has Light Blue helped you?

It is my 'go to' at the start of every day to see what I should be focusing on - following up that enquiry, keeping in touch with my clients, editing a shoot, etc... I have set up workflows for enquiries, weddings and portraits that I import into each enquiry / job. I use these to make sure that I know exactly what I need to do and when. I also use the e-mail and document templates to automate as much as I can on the admin side of my business. I can also keep track of my income and expenditure for each job so I know how my business is performing.

What's your favorite feature in Light Blue?

Difficult one. I think that it would be the workflows and templates - anything that that I can simplify / automate in my business is a good thing.

What do you like about version 3 compared to version 2?

It just gets slicker and slicker but the stand out thing for me has got to be the iPad / iPhone functionality and the hosting. Superb!

Do you have any other comments?

Since the beginning I have been a huge fan of Light Blue and it has made a big difference in my business. It is a great piece of software with excellent support - the people at Light Blue Software have always responded to my dumb questions and wishlist of feature requests promptly, with good grace and humour. I would really encourage anyone who does not have a proper database in place for their photography business to think about it sooner rather than later. The video tutorials are excellent and make it easy to learn so there is no excuse.

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