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Contact Manager Software?

The Equipment Guy

The Equipment Guy

New Member
Hi Gary...

In answer to your question, yes that is exactly what I am doing, the reason being that it is easy to synch Outlook with the Blackberry, it is easy to synch ACT! with Outlook but I have not had the time to look at any of the 3rd party software for synching ACT! directly to the Blackberry. I am sure there is a very stable and good program for this, but I have no experience with this yet, that will be my next step when I have the time, but my current project is the custom fields in ACT! Since the synchs are fairly hands off, the extra synch is no big deal for me.

I am working towards having custom pull down menus for every type of printing, cutting and routing equipment that I have ever heard of or might ever sell...might take me a while, lol.

Craig
 
choucove

choucove

New Member
Recently I have been asked about this issue by some of the people in our office. This issue becomes a hassle in a couple of ways with our company such as messages between our two offices (Colby and Hays locations) take some time to relay sometimes, and keeping track of messages over a long period of time can be difficult as well (and require a lot of paper-tracking!)

I briefly looked into ACT! as a possible solution, but unfortunately both places that I have looked at it being used, it has caused a lot of headaches, caused the computers to run much slower, and generally took so much time to reconfigure for what we need that it wasn't the ideal solution.

I'm somewhat contemplating just making up my own little database using Microsoft Access that can store this information in a couple nested tables. The database file could then be shared to all company employees and even be accessible in both office locations once all of our network upgrading is complete. This way, I could design a real basic tool that wouldn't require a lot of computer resources to run, could be highly customizable to whatever we need, and free.
 
G

GB2

Old Member
GG you're right I'm really surprised there isn't a lot more discussion about business practices here. After all it's one of the most difficult parts of owning your own business.

Craig, thanks for that information, I only have a regular phone at the moment but I'm about to upgrade to a more featured phone so I didn't even think about syncing to the phone. It's always those questions you don't even know to ask that will get you!

Bobby, I used to be a developer in FileMaker for many years but haven't done anything since FM5. I think it's a great database that you could do almost anything with. I wish I wasn't so out of touch with it right now.

Choucove, you have the right idea there as long as you are comfortable with using Access it will accomplish the same thing as using FileMaker. They are a good solution, I just always found FileMaker to be so much easier to use but Access is much more readily available.
 
The Equipment Guy

The Equipment Guy

New Member
The synch to a phone might not be so important to a shop based operation, but to a road based rep, it is probably my primary tool. Outlook is also still quicker to look up simple info as it is usually already open for email. Its once you get into managing info that Outlook does nothing for you.

Craig
 
Fred Weiss

Fred Weiss

Merchant Member
I've used FileMaker since the mid 1980's when we got a Mac SE. Still keep my old version 4 installed and running on our network. Although we have Quickbooks for our primary accounting, our invoicing, account management and pricing estimates are all done on FileMaker.

Setting up layouts is slightly easier than a three line magnetic sign and you can follow your nose right through it. The math and other functions provide more versatility than an Excel spreadsheet.
 
C

ChiknNutz

New Member
MS Excel or OpenOffice would be a decent tool to use too. It would be pretty easy to set up various cells that allow for entry of dates and then calculated dates for follow ups. A lot depends on the level of sophistication you are after, but I've done some fairly involved spreadsheets as Excel is a very powerful tool.
 
HeavyHitter

HeavyHitter

New Member
Just an idea... I have www.evernote.com installed on my iphone. I also have in on my desktop and laptop. I type a note in one it syncs it over the net so I can access it no matter where I am. Might be a little different than what you are looking for. The free account is enough to handle what I need.
 
Wes Phifer

Wes Phifer

New Member
Has anyone tried Microsoft Business Contact Manager in Outlook 2007? It looks to do some of these things but I haven't tried it yet.
 
Edserv

Edserv

New Member
I didn't have time to review all the responses you've received about your post, but we've had really great results with a custom-built Microsoft-Access program that handles almost all our operations and accounting. In fact, we can't believe (in talking with many sign shop owners,) that they don't use something like our system. It handles everything from call-ins to lead generation to quotes, to sale, to orders, to production to requests of artwork changes, to collection calls, deliveries, etc. I don't know what I would do without it!
Good luck,
Chris,
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