I have a client who wants to clean up her database and consolidate for better efficiency. Most of her contacts are listed in Access. Some are in Outlook. I haven't used either very much for contact management. But I have used ACT and Highrise, both of which I love for their user friendly format and grouping & notes features. She wants to be able to enter notes on her contacts, attach documents, and sort and group and filter. Possibly even track her time. She does podcasts, enews letters, blogging and mailed news letters etc. My question is: would Access or Outlook work for these purposes or would she be better off using a program like ACT or Highrise? (I'm leaning toward the latter.) Any advice would be appreciated.

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Carol Aldridge
www.ProgressiveBusinessSolutions.net

These are many programs out there that could help her with this. If she is looking to just keep the information in one neat, tidy area with notes and reminders then a CRM system would be the best benefit. It she is looking to send newsletters and notification then an email marketing program such as Constant Contact, Mailchimp, Aweber would be better for her.

There are many threads on this topic if need some suggestions to find the right fit for her.

Since she wants to be able to group, add items, notes and filter, your best bet would be a CRM program and there are many. I would find a few to suggest based on price, easy of use and content to suggest to her. Remember that it is not what you are comfortable with but what is she comfortable with.

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Lee Drozak
My Office Assistant

Thanks Lee - I appreciate your reply. I was looking into Outlook, and it seems this may work for her as a primary contact system. She can pull the email addresses from here into constant contact etc as needed. What are your thoughts on Outlook for this purpose? I'll check around the other threads here for additional info as well. Again, thanks so much for taking the time to share your thoughts.

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Carol Aldridge
www.ProgressiveBusinessSolutions.net

One thing to ask is whether or not she is going to want you to be able to access the data stored. If so then looking at an online system might be the way to go, but much of it does depend on what will work for her in the long run.

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Renee Shupe, Become a Techie Virtual Assistant
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Thanks Renee. If she goes with a program like Outlook, I suppose I can export it to clean up the data, however if she needs me to add contacts etc on a regular basis, I would need to use a remote access application like Logmein. This is all great info. Thanks again!

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Carol Aldridge
www.ProgressiveBusinessSolutions.net