Small Business Contact Management

Make money by improving your marketing outreach and your lead follow-up. Quickly and accurately capture important business contact information, categorize contacts, synchronize with mobile devices, export to other programs and safely back up your contact lists online. Access information from any web browser and run automatic updates so that contact information is always accessible and always current.

Thanking Your Industry Expert and Educational Champion

Learn about...

Why Contact Management is Important What are CRM & SFA? Organization Benefits Employee Benefits

Tailored Solutions Problems Solved Business Uses When to Use

10 Great Reasons Where to Begin About Your Educational Champion

---

Why Contact Management is Important

Most every aspect of a business’s success comes from building relationships. Contact Management is all about the process of effectively and efficiently turning contacts into customer relationships. All too often this process is anything but effective or efficient. Business professionals collect business cards at meetings, trade shows and other networking events and then "pile, file or manually key" data into some digital format.

By improving your ability to collect, compile, organize and retrieve qualified contacts, you can significantly add to your business's bottom line. Technology today has been refined to offer an efficient desktop Contact Management Solution that quickly and accurately "reads" business cards placing critical contact information into the correct fields of an electronic address book. The "read" process instantly distinguishes contact name from title, street from email address, fax from phone numbers, even office from cell numbers. Once captured, software features allow you to then use this information productively to grow your business.

What are CRM & SFA?

Businesses spend a lot of time and money collecting contact information, and then all too often, do not have the process, insight or means to use it efficiently and effectively. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the term used to describe the process of organized and effective use of this information as a basis for launching marketing campaigns, sales development, and other forms of activities. In other words, turning contacts into customer relationships.

The same is true for channeling leads to a sales force through Sales Force Automation (SFA) systems. The common challenge here is effectively transferring a large collection of business cards gathered at trade shows, conferences and other networking events, into a manageable and usable database. The information can then be cross sorted and organized by a variety of characteristics (geography, type of business, level of interest, etc.), that allow the sales team to turn contacts into customer relationships.

Organization Benefits

Relationships are an inherent part of every business exchange. With an automated, accurate and affordable Contact Management Solution your business can expect to capitalize on the following benefits:

• Eliminate lost opportunities by harvesting contacts you have already made
• Improve productivity in every aspect of your business; e.g., Purchasing, Sales, Marketing, Accounting, Human Resources, etc., as all core functions rely on relationships to be successful
• Reduce indirect costs of inaccurate data as data is captured automatically and accurately versus manually keyed
• Lower the hurdles of CRM/SFA user adoption to encourage widespread adoption of these technologies

Employee Benefits

There are many different types of business situations where having a Contact Management Solution can significantly improve productivity:

BUSINESS ROLE	BENEFITS
Purchasing Agent	Quickly and efficiently keep track of every vendor, by bid, project, month, and shipping location
Executive Assistant	Easily administer a follow-up marketing program for the Sales VP, who returns from trade shows with hundreds of business cards
Sales Professional	Capture, organize and retrieve valuable contacts
Meeting Planner	Instantly access the phone number of a client's travel agent from your PDA to change reservations for 15 people from your car.

Tailored Solutions

Just as each relationship is different, so are options for selecting a Contact Management Solution that suits your specific business needs. Below are stand-alone contact management solutions as well as solutions that work with existing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Sales Force Automation (SFA) systems.

Solutions for Individuals	Solutions for Multiple Users	Solutions for Trade Shows
Basic Contact Management	Networked contact management for group use	Lead Qualifier
Advanced Contact Management	Networked contact management for group use	Forms; Lead profile, memo or survey
	Networked contact management for group use	Custom Forms; multiple question, registration, orders & more

Solutions for CRM Systems	Solutions for Workgroups
For use with Microsoft CRM	For use with ACT! Premium
For use with Salesforce.com	For use with GoldMine Corporate Edition
For use with SalesLogix
Compare all solutions

Problems Solved

Today's Contact Management technologies offer significant productivity improvements. Select any one of the following topics to learn how:

Scanning User Interface Searching & Sorting Application Compatibility

Data Import/Export Processing Cards Enhanced Utilities

Printing Dialing Database Management

Business Uses

View how other professionals like you, have used a Contact Management Solution to be better organized for building their business momentum.

When to Use

There are many situations when new contacts are made that, if captured more effectively, could help you to build more productive, long-lasting business relationships.

Trade Shows Chamber Events Business Dinners On the Golf Course Fundraisers

Political Rallies Presentations Committee Meetings Networking Events Conferences

Dinner Parties Child's Soccer Game Sporting Events Training Events Concerts

...whenever and wherever you meet, there's an opportunity to network, build relationships and build business.

10 Great Reasons for Using a Contact Management Solution

One of the scarcest resources today is time, and one of the keys to success is efficiency. A Contact Management Solution offers both and more...

1. Improved organization so that you don't miss opportunities
2. Efficiently aggregate contacts so that the entire business benefits
3. Prevent sales opportunities from slipping through the cracks
4. Save time with automation versus manual data entry
5. Eliminate errors, frustration and lost opportunities from data entry mistakes
6. Improve productivity with search, sort and back up features
7. Share contact information with others
8. Access contact data anywhere, any time via computer, PDA or smart phone
9. Email multiple contacts quickly to promote a new offer
10. Cost-effectively stay in touch with all contacts keeping your business in their minds

Where to Begin

To learn more about the benefits of a Contact Management Solution or to purchase a solution based on your specific needs...

1. Contact CardScan
2. Discover where to buy
3. Speak to a real person now - call 1-866-890-1659

About Your Educational Champion

"For more than a decade, CardScan has been solving the inherent problem of business cards: haphazard organization. Today, with over 500,000 customer's, CardScan facilitates instant capture, retention and access to your most valuable resource: the contacts you've spent a career building"

# # #

Note: This information is presented to provide a general overview of small business options and related services. It is not intended to be an exhaustive representation. Data has been compiled by the Knowledge Institute for informational purposes only. Content is provided on an "as is" basis and is not intended to, nor does it, provide advice or create a customer relationship between the Knowledge Institute, BUZGate™ and/or any other organization named herein, and any reader.

Stay ed ~Subscribe for FREE Resource Updates