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Business Contact
Manager
 Will
it work for you?
Business Contact Manager is bundled free
with the Small Business and Professional editions of Microsoft’s
Office System 2003. The Business Contact Manager software
is actually an “add-in” to Microsoft Outlook 2003 that enables
Outlook to better serve the information needs of business
users, especially individual business users, but is it right
for you?
Business Contact Manager
Features and Benefits
Business Contact Manager adds new capabilities
to Outlook that enables the user to create Company-level
and Contact-level records and then to associate the appropriate
Contacts with the appropriate Companies. This is a powerful
capability that ordinary Outlook does not offer.
Business Contact Manager also enables
users to track activities—even sales Opportunities and an
individual’s entire sales pipeline—within the context of
the business Contact and its associated Company-level record.
This company-level record is often called an Account. So,
in essence, Business Contact Manager is an Account-centric
system whereas ordinary Outlook is a Contact-centric system.
This is an important point.
This Account-centric design is important
because most companies, and many not-for-profit groups,
have real business needs that require them to organize their
information around a legal entity (Company and/or Account)
that has several contacts associated with it that all function
in different capacities. Even organizations that employ
a business-to-consumer models benefit from this Account-centric
design by enabling them to leverage the “Account” as a “Household”
of individual, but related contacts.
While Business Contact Manager offers
individual users the reports and tools that will help them
better manage business-related information, become more
productive and respond to customers faster, it offers little
to facilitate collaboration between team members to improve
overall organizational productivity, facilitate team collaboration
or manage customer inquiries.
Evidence of Business Contact Manager’s
failure to contribute to organizational productivity can
be found on Microsoft’s
Business Contact Manager’s FAQ. On this page Microsoft
states that Business Contact Manager is “a single-user contact
management solution.” Furthermore, at the bottom of the
Business Contact Manager Product Overview page Microsoft
points out that Business Contact Manager and Exchange Server
do not peacefully co-exist within the same Microsoft Outlook
Profile.
To overcome the “collaboration barrier”
imposed by Business Contact Manager, consider an add-in
to Microsoft Outlook 2000 and later that has been on the
market for more than 5 years. Consider the Outlook Add-In
that is built from the ground up to promote team-based collaboration
on customer, prospect and partner relationships. Consider
the Outlook add-on that provides powerful, easy-to-use,
collaboration-based Customer and Account Management features
to all of your Microsoft Outlook and Office users:
Get All of the Native
Functionality of Outlook And Exchange – PLUS –
▪ Centralized organizational / departmental
data storage within Exchange Public Folders
▪ Organizational-level backups each
time your Exchange Server is backed up
▪ Consolidated organization-wide rolodex
of Accounts and Account Contacts
▪ Hierarchical relationships between
Accounts to manage multiple locations, divisions and subsidiaries
▪ Opportunity / Sales Pipeline Management
tools
▪ Document management and Word / Excel
document generation tools
▪ Marketing list management tools to
send personalized, bulk email blasts
▪ Customer service inquiry and response
management
▪ Seamless integration with private
mailbox folders like Tasks, Calendar, Inbox and Sent Items
▪ More than 20 customizable Crystal
reports included out of the box
▪ Customizable data schema, forms /
screens and source code (Outlook Forms / vbScript)
▪ Custom / Ad-Hoc reporting via any
application able to use an ODBC DSN as its data source (e.g.
Crystal reports, Excel, MapPoint, Publisher, Word and etc.)
▪ Support for the Microsoft Exchange
Workflow Designer to help you automate business processes
and enforce best practices
▪ Integrate data to / from external
applications and web-based applications using standard Microsoft
development tools, libraries and languages
▪ Built-in support for anytime, anywhere
use via Offline Folders and Outlook / Exchange
synchronization
▪ Optional modules and clients, including
Pocket PC and OWA clients, for advanced needs
▪ Host on your own Exchange Server,
on your ISP’s Exchange Server, or an ASP Hosting Service
provider
▪ Full support for Windows Small Business
Server 2003 and Exchange 2003
SalesOutlook sets the standard when it
comes to adding Customer/Account Management and Team Collaboration
capabilities into Microsoft Outlook. SalesOutlook
first pioneered the use of Microsoft Outlook for collaboration-based
Account Management and Sales Force Automation in 1998 –
years before other big-name CRM / SFA vendors even considered
the concept. As a proven industry innovator, SalesOutlook
is the extension to Microsoft Outlook, Office and Exchange
Server to consider for your current and future customer
interaction management and team-based account collaboration
needs.
To learn more about SalesOutlook, or to
request a demo, click here.
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