Always on the lookout for tools to help small business owners, I found out about a new business management application that you might be interested in. In my experience, one of the biggest challenges of running a small business is to keep track of customers and prospects. My tracking system usually consists of piles of business cards or newpaper clippings cluttering up my desk. That’s about as organized as I get. But if you’re a Microsoft Outlook user, you might be a perfect candidate for the new package that is supposed to help with managing your customer base, both current and future. Microsoft Corp. is now offering Microsoft Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager, a contact management application that extends the features of Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, as a stand-alone product. The stand-alone version offers customers an easy-to-use solution and can be purchased in retail outlets or online. "Small-business owners need effective solutions for managing their customer base," said Takeshi Numoto, general manager of Microsoft Office 2007 at Microsoft. "Currently, many small and home-based businesses keep their contacts in several different places -- some in Rolodexes, some in spreadsheets. We understand the importance of good customer management and are providing simple and affordable solutions to help small businesses centralize their customer information so that keeping track of customers is more effective and less time-consuming." Microsoft Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager provides all the functionality of Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, making it easy for small businesses to track sales and marketing activities in one place, including organizing contact, prospect and customer information; managing sales leads and business opportunities throughout the sales cycle; creating, personalizing and tracking direct marketing campaigns in-house; and centralizing project information and task management. Also, when used with Microsoft Office Accounting 2008, Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager offers small businesses additional benefits, such as the ability to view customer financial history and to bill for time and create invoices directly from Outlook. Outlook with Business Contact Manager and Office Accounting share the same customer database, so any changes to customer information in one application are automatically reflected in the other, eliminating the need for complex synchronization or updating customer data in two applications. So if getting organized in your office is one of your goals for the year, you might check out this new software offering at your local electronics store. Perhaps I can somehow manage to get my piles of business cards out of the way.
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