August 4, 2005

Microsoft Business Contact Manager

Microsoft Business Contact Manager gives you a high-powered way to use Outlook to manage your business contacts. Think of turning Outlook into a mini ACT!, Maximizer or some other similar tool.

I'll be reviewing it soon (it's been in my "to do" list for weeks), but in the
meantime, Small Business Computing writes The central concept introduced with BCM, and common to all CRM, is linking. You create links in the database between Accounts and Business Contacts between the customer company and all the contacts you deal with at that company. You create links between Opportunities and Accounts or Business Contacts. And you create links or the program creates them for you between History Items and the Accounts, Business Contacts and Opportunities with which they're associated.

This is what makes it possible to show all customer activity in one place. Once you link a Business Contact to an Account, for example, all the e-mail sent to or received from the contact appears in the History Items list for the Account, as well as in the History Items list for the contact.

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