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Contact Management Software

What are my options?

         

MatthewHSE

3:51 pm on Mar 23, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I've done some searching, but being unfamiliar with this type of software, I'm finding the claims made by software vendors somewhat confusing...

I need some contact management software with the following features:

  • Standard contact fields (name, company, phone, website, email, notes, etc.)
  • Ability to add custom fields (maybe not necessary, but nice)
  • Categorization of contacts.
  • Ability to mark certain contacts to be called at certain times and/or on certain dates, and ability to sort contacts by this criteria. This feature appears to be difficult to find.
  • Speaking of sorting, it would be nice to be able to sort by pretty much any criteria.
  • Advanced Searching features would be appreciated.
  • MS Outlook integration would be nice, perhaps vital.
  • Custom forms that could be quickly generated, pre-filled with a contact's information.
  • Ability to keep track of sales made to each contact, with dates, type of purchase, purchase amount, total amount contact has spent to date, etc.
  • Easy journaling or recording of when a contact has been called or e-mailed, with a memo line (or equivalent) for each time.

Additionally, I'd want to be able to import and export contact data as text files, and I'd like some kind of integration with Skype, Vonage, or some other reliable VOIP service. Another extremely handy feature for us would be an ability to send faxes (normally PDF files) to contacts right from the computer.

The folks who will actually use this software here may eventually come up with some other features they'd like, but for now this is all they've told me. It's my job to come up with some recommendations. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Matthew

ikkyu

4:04 pm on Mar 23, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I spent some time looking for a program like this a while back and came across SugarCRM. Its PHP and MySQL based so if you're good with that its definitely extendable. I'm not sure if it fits all of your list of requirements but I found the free open source version pretty respectable. Its worth a peek. I personally haven't used it much lately - it really didn't take hold here where I work.

And it was in a top ten software list on some business site not too long ago, forgot which one.

txbakers

4:07 pm on Mar 23, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Has anyone looked at CardScan? I keep seeing their ads in the airplane magazine. It looks and sounds very good, but I haven't tried it yet.

MatthewHSE

4:26 pm on Mar 25, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Thanks for the ideas guys. Has anyone tried ACT? I looked at their site and it looks like the software will work for our purposes, but it also seems to have a lot of features we won't need. I'd hoped to avoid that, as we need something that's as streamlined as possible. So often those extra features just get in the way, or complicate otherwise simple tasks.

Further ideas will be very welcome!