Contact management programs/software

[matt84]

I'm utilizing many of the software programs that Steve has recommended on his site. But I've yet to find a simple, organized program to manage both personal and business contacts.

Any suggestions on software or the system you guys use?

[dmauder]

For me, it's Outlook. It has everything I could possibly need, and it works great with GTD. Outlook provides email, calendar, contacts, tasks, and a notepad - and it syncs with my PDA.

Dave

[tstesen]

Originally Posted by matt84

I'm utilizing many of the software programs that Steve has recommended on his site. But I've yet to find a simple, organized program to manage both personal and business contacts.

Any suggestions on software or the system you guys use?

I personally use QuickBook's Contact Manager. The software syncs with both Microsoft Outlook and QuickBooks making it the most productive contact management tool I have found. Previously I used ACT! by Sage which at the time didn't sync with too much. Nowadays I believe it works with the Office suite as well as other programs although it costs significantly more than QB's contact manager.

The one thing I specifically liked about ACT! that QB's Customer Manager doesn't include is the ability to attach notes or documents to a contact's record. This was a very useful tool for attaching quotes or contracts to a client's record.

You might consider downloading trial versions of a few different contact management programs to see which will work the best for your needs if available.

Hope this helps

Tanya

[norbert]

I'm also looking for a simple program for keeping track of my contacts. It just occured to me that I simply want to store names and perhaps tags (optionally) because contact information is always available somewhere else (in an e-mail client, on a social networking platform etc).

My reason for using this "contact manager" application would be to not to forget about anybody. I happen to get to know at least some new people every week and I tend to simply forget most of them.

It would allow me to list names filtered by tags so I could quickly access a list of people who can help me in a specific area.

Was this on your mind or you need integration etc?

[tstesen]

[quote=norbert;155860]It would allow me to list names filtered by tags so I could quickly access a list of people who can help me in a specific area.QUOTE]

Great point Norbert. I wanted to add that the QB Contact Manager has this feature. You can assign each contact record to a group or set of groups to meet your needs. For example I can easily look up all my contacts that have the 'lead' tag associated with them. Or I can print labels for all my contacts that have a 'client' tag associated with them.

This makes it very easy for marketing purposes.

Tanya