Customer loyalty relies on your business remaining at the forefront
of their mind. Contact management software helps you build solid
business-client relationships
Contact management software is typically associated with sales
people. However, it can help many other people develop their
businesses. This paper examines contact management software, can
help business professionals grow their businesses by managing
business relationships more effectively.
If you are like many business people, maintaining contact with
people outside your company is a key part of your job. This
includes contact with prospects, customers, clients, vendors and
suppliers. It is through these contacts that you build the
relationships that are so vital to your business. As a result, it
is essential that you make the most of these contacts. The best way
to do it is with effective contact management.If you work with only
a few contacts, you can probably manage your business relationships
with a simple calendar, address book, word processor and perhaps an
email system. If you work with numerous contacts, however, you need
an automated and efficient system to help you maintain these
relationships effectively. You need a contact management software
solution such as Symantec's ACT!Although contact management
software is typically associated with sales professionals, it is an
ideal solution for any business person who, like a sales
representative, is externally focused and working to build a
business. Examples include small business owners, consultants,
professional recruiters and building contractors.This paper
examines contact management software and the many types of business
professionals who could benefit from it. It points out the
important differences between contact management software, personal
information management software (PIMs), and collaboration and
communication solutions, such as Microsoft Outlook. It examines
ACT! and distinguishes it from PIMs and Outlook with respect to its
intended use, capabilities and future direction. The paper also
illustrates how ACT! can help an individual build better business
relationships by effectively managing the many activities
surrounding contact with customers, clients, colleagues and
business partners.Contact management is the management of all the
tasks and information related to developing and maintaining
relationships with the people with whom you do business. It
involves a variety of activities, including finding and contacting
new prospects; following up with prospects and clients by
telephone, fax, mail and email; sending product information,
proposals and quotes; scheduling appointments and meetings and
creating correspondence to follow up and to generate new sales.
Others involve managing customers' post sales requests for service
and support; maintaining accurate records of all contact
interactions and generating reports for reviewing activities and
client/account status.A contact manager helps you free up valuable
time that you now waste on routine administrative tasks. You can
spend this time more profitably responding quickly to customer
needs and following up with clients and business partners in a
consistent and organised manner. As a result, you increase your
effectiveness in building business relationships and growing your
business.The need for a contact manager is typically associated
with salespeople. However, any businessperson that is externally
focused and needs to develop his or her business can benefit
significantly from a contact manager.
Small business owners and
managers can keep track of customers, vendors, and business
partners such as suppliers
Consultants can manage client
interactions as well as interactions with other consultants who
provide complementary services
Real estate agents can more
effectively farm their territories by managing relationships with
sellers and buyers
Building contractors can co-ordinate
subcontractors, suppliers, customers and inspectors
Public
relations and advertising professionals can manage interactions
with clients, press, writers, printers and graphic
artists
Recruiters can track job candidates and clients to
match people and companies faster and more efficiently
Seminar
and training professionals can manage interactions with
instructors, promoters, attendees, facility managers and equipment
suppliers
Manufacturers' representatives can track
transactions and interactions with manufacturers and
customers
Banking and financial professionals can maintain
contacts with clients and financial product providersThese people
have a great deal in common with salespeople. Salespeople are
essentially running a business within their territory. Their major
tasks are to find and target new prospects and to ensure the
satisfaction of current customers. Like salespeople, small business
owners, consultants, PR and advertising people, and others on the
list above need to search out new prospects and keep current
customers satisfied. As a result, all these people perform common
activities that can be automated and streamlined by a contact
manager.Contact managers are designed specifically for
relationship-driven professionals. They aim to make these people
more effective in managing relationships by helping to manage
interactions with people outside the organisation. This includes
contact with customers, clients, and business partners such as
suppliers and distributors. A comprehensive contact manager
includes calendar; reporting module; email; word processor; fax
integration; auto-dialler; notifications and alerts; free-form
notes and mail-merge capabilities.Built on the foundation of a
contact-centric database, contact managers provide complete and
comprehensive tracking of all information related to contacts. For
example, if a meeting is held with a particular client, the contact
manager tracks the meeting date and time, the subject, the
attendees, all associated correspondence and any meeting
notes.Contact managers add a user interface to the power of a
database allowing fast and easy access to all information
associated with a contact. When a client telephones, for example, a
consultant can immediately display a complete contact history for
that client, including proposals, schedules, contracts, meetings
and telephone calls. Contact managers also provide tools that
automate routine communication and reporting activities.PIMs
provide some of the capabilities of contact managers. However,
there are important differences. A PIM is used primarily as an
electronic record-keeping device that helps people move all their
personal information onto their computers. It maintains information
that has typically been scattered across a variety of paper devices
such as index cards, Rolodexes and calendars.A PIM usually includes
an address book, a calendar and a to-do list. It typically mimics
the paper-based versions of these tools. PIMs help business people
organise their personal information such as schedules, tasks, and
addresses. Unlike contact managers, however, PIM contact tracking
functionality is rudimentary. Another important difference is that
there is little integration between the components of a PIM, that
is, they do not integrate contacts, calendars, tasks and
correspondence generation. In addition, PIMs only provide limited,
if any, capability to attach free-form notes to contact records.In
summary, although PIMs store some of the same information
maintained by contact managers, the information is not linked to
contacts. As a result, it is time-consuming to gather all the
information related to a specific client and therefore cumbersome
to use a PIM for contact management.Many people, who do not require
a powerful contact manager and contact database, can work
effectively by simply getting their personal information on their
computers. However, people who are trying to develop business
relationships need more than a PIM ( and that's where a contact
manager such as ACT! comes in.Collaboration and communication
solutions, such as Microsoft Outlook, are designed primarily to
help users organise information on the desktop and communicate and
share this information among colleagues in a workgroup, department,
or team. Collaboration and communication solutions typically
include calendar; address book; task list; email; record keeping
and document management.A major difference between solutions such
as Outlook and contact managers is that Outlook is internally
focused rather than externally focused. Outlook facilitates sharing
information and communicating
within an organisation, while
contact managers facilitate the maintenance of relationships with
people
outside the organisation. That's why Microsoft
positions Outlook as a collaboration and communication solution
rather than a contact manager. In addition, Outlook focuses on
maintaining the user's personal information rather than information
about the user's contacts.Outlook is built on the integration of
four components: email, a scheduling manager, an address book and a
document management capability. As a result, it is especially well
suited for co-ordinating the activities of a work group or team in
that it facilitates collaboration and communication within the
group, and it provides document flow control.In contrast, contact
managers are usually built on a contact-centric database and are
designed for the day-to-day management of contact information in an
individual or small group environment. A contact manager provides
an excellent solution for people who work with outside contacts and
need to keep track of all their communications with each
contact.ACT! differs from PIMs in two major ways:
Built on a
powerful, contact-centric databaseACT! is built around a
database that is contact-centric, that is, it links all interaction
activities and information to the contact record. PIMs, on the
other hand, are typically built on flat file structures that are
intended primarily to store personal information such as addresses
and telephone numbers. They do not have the extensive linking
capability of ACT!
Far richer contact management
functionalityACT! has many features designed specifically to
maximise contact management effectiveness. These include extensive
contact tracking, tight integration of all activities and
information related to each contact and comprehensive reporting.
PIMs are designed primarily to manage personal information and do
not have nearly as rich contact management functionality. As a
result of these significant differences, PIMs do not even approach
the extensive contact management capabilities of ACT!ACT! differs
from collaboration and communication solutions, specifically
Outlook, in two key areas:
Focus on contact managementACT! is
designed primarily to help individuals and small groups manage
their contacts outside the organisation more effectively. Outlook,
on the other hand, is designed primarily to help internal groups
collaborate and communicate with each other more
effectively.
Future directionOutlook's horizontal nature
means its feature set overlaps somewhat with ACT! The two products,
however, are headed in different directions. Symantec's future
direction for ACT! includes evolving the product's contact
management capabilities in two major areas: enhanced functionality
for the sales market segment and additional functionality that
enables ACT! to move into additional market segments such as small
business. Microsoft's future direction for Outlook is to increase
its utility as a horizontal tool to enable internally focused
groups to collaborate and communicate more effectively.In view of
these differences, ACT! actually offers an attractive complement to
collaboration and communication solutions rather than a competing
solution.Because of the synergy of ACT! with collaboration and
communication solutions Symantec has formed a strategic alliance
with Microsoft to integrate the capabilities of ACT! and
Outlook.The ACT!/Outlook alliance allows ACT! users to take
advantage of email and to share contact and calendar information.
For example, an Outlook user can attach a meeting or contact record
(vcard/vcal) to an email message and send it to an ACT! user. When
the ACT! user receives the message, he or she simply double-clicks
on the attachment (vcard/vcal item), and the contact or activity
record is merged into the ACT! contact database. ACT! users can
also send contact or calendar items to Outlook users by attaching
them to email messages. In the future, look for even more
integration between ACT! and Outlook, allowing ACT! users to take
advantage of more of the powerful Outlook communication and
collaboration features.
How contact management can expand your
businessAllen works as a representative at a small plumbing
supply company. Here's an example of how contact management helps
him using Symantec's ACT!. Allen checks his calendar to see what
appointments he has over the next few daysHe prints a to-do list
showing the tasks that are due todayACT! generates a list of
contacts that require follow up today:( For mailers he sent last
week( For two proposals he recently submitted( For key contacts who
requested a callbackHe checks his email and sees a message
describing a promotion that a supplier is offering on productsAllen
sets a task to send an email message about the promotion to all
customers who might be interestedAllen checks his voice mail and
makes notes using SideACT!. He then transfers some of the notes
into his ACT! databaseHe displays the record for the first contact
he needs to call and brings up his notes to find out what he needs
to doHe clicks on the Dial Phone icon in the toolbar and ACT! dials
the contact automatically The client is preparing budgets and needs
an updated price listWhile he is talking to the client, he creates
an email message, attaches his most recent price list, and sends
itACT! addresses the message automatically from his contact
recordHe attaches the email message to the contact record to keep
an up-to-date historyHe asks when funding for new purchases will be
approved and schedules the next follow-up for that timeHe dials the
next contact to discuss the quote he sent last weekThe client wants
Allen to do a presentation to senior managementAllen checks his
schedule and the schedule of a co-worker whom he wants to attendHe
schedules the presentation meeting. While scheduling the meeting,
Allen selects to have ACT! send a meeting notice to the co-worker
to inform him of the newly scheduled meetingHe adds a task to his
to-do list reminding him to prepare information for the
presentationAllen completes his remaining telephone callsHere's
another example:Allen makes his phone callsAllen needs more
information on the vice president he sat next to on the plane last
weekHe enters her name in the Internet Directory Lookup. ACT!
automatically connects to Yahoo!, sets up a search, and retrieves
the contact's email addressHe adds this contact information to his
ACT! database with a single clickHe creates an email message
addressed to this new contactHe sends the email message mentioning
the conversation on the plane and attaches information about his
company and productsHe enters the contact's web address and with
one click goes to the website to learn more about their company and
its productsHe copies some important information from the site into
the notes section of the contact recordHe schedules a follow-up
activity for this new contactHe reviews the email message regarding
the special promotion and creates a letter describing it using his
word processorHe reviews his contact list and identifies people who
would be interestedACT! merges the selected contact names into the
letter and prints the letters and envelopesHe schedules the
contacts that require telephone follow-upThe phone rings. It's the
purchasing manager from ABC Company. She needs some modifications
to Allen's recent quote so he can create a purchase orderAllen
displays the contact record, which has the quote attachedHe reviews
the quote over the phone, adding some items and deleting othersHe
faxes the new quote immediately by simply clicking on the QuickFax
buttonA reminder pops up on his computer screen indicating that the
proposal for XYZ Company is due tomorrow morningHe opens the
proposal document, puts a few finishing touches to it and prints
itHe decides to deliver it in person to the client tomorrow and
sets a reminder so he won't forgetHe selects the Driving Directions
Internet link to direct him to the client's officeAnother reminder
displays, letting him know that one of his clients is having a
birthdayHe dials the client by clicking on the Dial Phone toolbar
buttonBefore leaving on a two-day trip, he prints a copy of his
calendar to take with himHe also synchronises his Palm Pilot with
ACT! using the free link supplied with ACT!. This ensures the
information in his Palm Pilot is up to dateWhile he is on the road,
he enters changes into his Palm PilotWhen he returns to the office,
he synchronises his ACT! database with his Palm Pilot to keep the
database up to date with the changes he made while on the roadAllen
wants to see how he spent his time last week to gauge his
effectivenessHe prints a report that shows his activities for the
week and how much time he spent on each one. The report shows the
date, time, duration, and associated information for activities
related to each contact during the date range Allen specifiedHe
also prints a contact report and contact status reportACT! helps
Allen accomplish all these tasks quickly and easily, with a minimum
amount of time spent on routine administrative tasks, such as
record keeping and faxing. That gives him more time to spend on
critical business tasks such as attracting new customers and
maintaining the satisfaction of existing customers. PIMs and
collaboration and communication solutions simply aren't designed to
handle the complex interrelationships of the various contact
management activities that ACT! handles with ease.Contact managers
were designed originally as powerful tools for sales professionals.
However, as contact managers such as ACT! grow in popularity and
capability, their value is becoming apparent to a much wider
audience. That's because contact managers help people manage their
business relationships more effectively, whether they're sales
representatives or other business professionals. And effective
management of relationships is the key to growing a
business.Contact management software has enormous potential to help
business professionals across a wide variety of business functions
and industries grow their businesses.
Compiled by Rachel
Hodgkins(c) 1999 Symantec