Contact Management Software

Content

The way you structure your data in your contact management system will depend on your business and the way you like to organise things. Consider the following:

• Contacts - like an address book with names, phone numbers, physical and e-mail addresses. You should be able to e-mail and call with one click. You may want to include distribution lists in your contacts folder - groups of people you often need to contact at the same time with the same message. You may also be able to mail-merge from this list.

• Actions - this will be where you group the things you can do with your contacts, like sending letters, e-mail messages, organising meetings, and so on. You can relate each of these activities to a specific contact, or group of contacts, and you can store the letters and e-mail messages here too. You'll want to include flags on your actions too - reminders that will pop-up, reminding you to call someone, or send them a letter, by a certain date.

• Calendar / Diary - this can be set to automatically update details of your engagements from the decisions you make in your Actions folder. Sharing calendars with colleagues is a great way to co-ordinate your activities, and see when the best time for a team meeting is.