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Contact Management

Contact Management

Everyday you make contact with someone -- a customer, a vendor/supplier, a prospect, a co-worker. Contacts are valuable in every organization. Often a business' success relies on the contacts it makes and keeps. Every business needs a system to store and help organize these contacts while allowing access to these contacts by anyone in your organization for future communication.

- Have you ever needed to look up a contact's address, phone number or email address but it's in someone else's private Outlook folder?
- Have you ever lost business contacts through personnel changes?
- Have you ever lost that little post-it note or that "while you were out" message which had a valuable contact you now need to call?
- Can't find that business card of someone you recently met at a conference or networking event who wants to do business with you?

Anyone can benefit from a good Contact Management System (CMS) or Contact Relationship Management (CRM). Successful communication is one of the most important things today's business. With technology enabling access to information and automating processes, it is now critical to have good software in place that simplifies communications, scheduling, data management and office processes. This is generally termed in the industry as “contact management software" or "contact management system" (CMS), because it enables quick access to contacts and sometimes helps in building relationships with the various types of people in an organization. A good contact manager helps small and mid-size companies compete in this global economy the way bigger, better-financed firms compete. When implemented and utilized to its fullest, a contact manager helps a firm run smoother with fewer human resources available by automating common tasks and simplifying communications with customers, vendors and employees. This enables the employees to focus on the relationship they are building, not on how to work the computer to accomplish this. Relationship building becomes easier and goals are more obtainable.

The ability to share the information and automatically increase interoffice communication among coworkers is the major advantage of a CMS. This is done outside the traditional accounting system and should have import capabilities. Anyone in your company should be able to look up a contact and see what has been communicated and what interest or need the contact has that can be satisfied.

The everyday infrastructure of a business can be automated by a CMS. Simplifying tasks like messaging, scheduling, and letter writing become routine processes and the information created by the company is easily shared with those who need it. Mass communicating and direct selling become streamlined and cost effective. The days of spending a week to do a mailing to your entire customer base can be done in just minutes through broadcast faxing and e-mailing.

The benefits of a CMS do not stop with just the needs of the customer -- it adds value to the business as a whole. Employees are happier and less stressed because processes and procedures are simplified, take less time and effort to execute and the details are "taken care of". Employees become more organized and effective in achieving team goals. Management also benefits from increased employee productivity, lowered business expenses, reduced overtime hours, and goals are easier to meet. The business as a whole can run leaner because a good contact manager allows employees to multi-task with ease.

There are many contact managers on the market - but which one is right for you? There are some key factors to consider about your existing contact manager or one that you are about to purchase.

• The information you enter must be accurate and true. The database must be maintained and updated on a regular basis. Many companies find themselves with enormous databases but find them ineffective because the information is not accurate or there are duplicates.
  Another tip is to train employees to enter the data in the same way in order to accurately retrieve the information.
  
• Documents such as fax cover sheets, letters, labels and lists should be easily constructed within the program and should be able to communicate with Microsoft Office without complex exporting procedures.
  
• Interoffice communication and communications to the outside world should become effortless. Messaging to cellular phones, pagers, e-mail and radios should be easy without retyping.
  
• Tracking the communications should be readily available for all employees to access.
  
• Other features to look for in a CMS is the ability to categorize contacts in terms of their service or product interest, industry, call options, hobbies and anything that has relevance to your business. This allows anyone in your company to create a search based on any of the categories that you have established.
  
• The ability effortlessly helps build a stronger relationship with your client base. Knowing a customer or prospective customer's needs, wants and interests shows the direct interest in them both professionally and personally.

The bottom line is a good contact manager saves a business time, money and gives the right information needed to accomplish a business's objectives.

If you use Microsoft Outlook to create contacts, OpenDoor Software offers a simple, helpful tool which automatically duplicates and synchronizes everyone's individual Outlook business contacts into a central Outlook Public Contact folder so contacts can be shared. No learning curve is involved - it's automatic. And it's a LIVE database, as changes are made to a contact in either the private or public Outlook folder, ContactXchange will update the copy - effortlessly.

If you are a Microsoft Office user and need a more powerful contact manager than Outlook Contacts, OpenDoor Software has a solution for managing and communicating with your contacts and uses Outlook for messaging & collaboration.
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