The software has a simple proposition that makes it unique: turn your Gmail into CRM. Where most of us rely on emails as our direct communication line to customers and prospects, Streak’s approach makes sense.

The CRM plugin focuses on your inbox, specifically Gmail, and groups email threads based on your workflows. It ups the ante of email labeling; emails aren’t just tagged, they’re grouped together in stages across a pipeline. The software is designed to be compatible with the processes in sales, deal flow, product development, support, fundraising, hiring and real estate.

Because it is limited to Gmail, Streak is ideal for freelance and small business. However, larger organizations  that rely on Google’s email client will find the plugin useful. In fact, Streak is used by top tech companies like Uber, Weebly, Twitter and Yelp.

With Streak it’s easy to track views, send bulk emails, schedule emails and create separate but related email threads for different teams like sales, support, product and HR.

Best of all, Streak has a freemium ideal for personal use or freelance. It’s a nice way to get yourself used to implementing CRM for more sales.

Thinking inside the box works. When everybody is thinking out-of-the-box, sometimes things get unnecessarily complicated. CRM is one case. A simple process that you used to do in email becomes complicated when a separate CRM solution is added. Employees have to learn new tools and trinkets, and, in most cases, adapt their processes to this new system. The result is a simple, effective workflow is disrupted and the team’s momentum is lost.

Streak doesn’t disrupt or change, rather, it adds up to what you’ve already perfected. Literally thinking inside the box, Streak complements your email habits. User adoption comes naturally, helping employees to get better at pushing deals down the funnel with their trusted email client.

Adapts to myriad workflows. Streak suits the stages in deal flow and sales pipeline, but it doesn’t stop there. Product developers can structure workflows for collaboration and task stages. Fundraisers can organize stages into a familiar layout to move their pitches. Support can use “new,” “assigned” and “resolved” to sort emails. Human resource can divide the emails into meaningful hiring stages like resume, interviews and onboarding. Real estate will also find the CRM plugin easy to adopt. There are plenty of ways to organize emails that suit how you are already processing the steps to meet your goals.

It’s highly collaborative. Email is still one of the most useful and familiar collaboration tools. Customers, team members, key partners, anyone can readily adopt to it and stick to the conversation. What Streak does is strengthen email’s weaknesses. One is the CRM plugin centralizes shared documents. You can view all contents related to a deal. In short, you get to access shared files no matter at what stage your conversation is with a specific party. This way, you can easily get up to speed where you left off on your last discussion.

Specifically, project teams can share mock-ups, proposals, requests and other documents related to a project. Emails are also shared so newcomers can quickly get into the discussion. You can also transform your simple inbox into a collaboration platform with external teams like clients and suppliers.

Meantime, support can share a library of best answers and editable snippets to address recurring questions without losing a personal touch. For HR managers, sharing resumes with other executives is important to arrive at an informed decision.

Leverage available tool. Streak doesn’t replace your client-facing tool. It enhances it to help you gain more visibility across the pipeline. You don’t miss out on opportunities. For instance, a customer inquiry received by support can quickly be channeled to sales. Suddenly, your Gmail company account becomes a CRM that links different teams. Without installing or subscribing to a different system, you upgrade how your teams work together, even separately but aligned to your overall goals. From finance’s perspective, this is cost-effective, a low capital outlay resulting in a potentially huge ROI.

No-frills CRM implementation. If you’re just implementing CRM to increase sales or improve overall business efficiency, Streak is a compact, straightforward tool to get started. It doesn’t have the bells and whistles of more popular CRM solutions; just the tools that matter for now. That said, it trains your workforce to learn CRM disciplines like spotting opportunities by association, using 80/20 principle to follow leads with the most return, and focus on core tasks while automating administrative and recurring ones. With user adoption almost guaranteed–it’s so simple to use–your CRM strategies are quickly implemented, followed and perfected.