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| | The Marketing, Channels/Partnership & Sales Execs Network is not currently active and cannot accept new posts | | Thoughts on Microsoft's Business Contact Manager as SFA tool | Views: 712 | | Oct 26, 2005 4:36 am | | Thoughts on Microsoft's Business Contact Manager as SFA tool | # |
Mike Foley | | We are looking at using Microsoft's business contact manager mainly because of its integration with accounting, but it looks like it has less functionality than even ACT! Has anyone used the Microsoft product, and if so, how do you like it? Private Reply to Mike Foley | | Nov 01, 2005 2:23 am | | re: Thoughts on Microsoft's Business Contact Manager as SFA tool | # | 
David Norcross | | Not good reviews. Full of bugs. I have tested as well and agree with the reviews. I would strongly consider salesforce.com or salesboom.com or sugarcrm along with ACT! Private Reply to David Norcross | | Nov 01, 2005 11:59 am | | re: Thoughts on Microsoft's Business Contact Manager as SFA tool | # |
Kumaran V. | | Hi,
Try Sales Express from SAP. Contains just enough information; activity management, opportunity management, contact management, outlook integration. Can be implemented in less 50 days depending on the scope. The huge leverage is that other components of sales order management, contract management etc. can be implemented without an additional software
Regards Private Reply to Kumaran V. | | Nov 01, 2005 5:02 pm | | re: re: Thoughts on Microsoft's Business Contact Manager as SFA tool | # | 
Lydia Sugarman | | Contact managers were initially built to be glorified address books w/ a few bells and whistles...literally in ACT's case. But, they are not designed to be SFA tools or CRM tools, either. You will not get the ability to follow sales forecasting and tracking and that's just a beginning.
I know there are a lot of fans of ACT!, Goldmine, Salesforce.com, etc. There are just as many who've abandoned because of limitations, Byzantine or confusing apps, expense, lack of adoption.
23The same holds true for Siebel CRM OnDemand and others.
You have to ask yourself if you're looking for something that will work for your sales people or will generate the reports that middle and upper management need to the detriment of time spent selling by the sales people. Then, do you want something that works now or will be scalable? Does it include CRM and fully trackable email marketing and communications tools tied to Website activity? Do you want your online presentation/conferencing solution to integrate with these?
Finally, if your ultimate goal is Customer Data Integration to enable informed customer support and upselling, then does the solution do that without a lot of additional programming and software?
I love talking about this. This is what my company does. So, I don't want to turn this into banned self-promotion, so please get in touch directly.
Sincerely,
Lydia Sugarman
lks at pli-inc dot comPrivate Reply to Lydia Sugarman | | |
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