Many people have asked me what the killer app is for Office and I have always replied that it depends on the customers' needs. This is still true, so I am not doing a U-turn on that, but one thing people are always after is some form of CRM solution, but moving people to MS-CRM has an associated expense and complexity. BCM in Office 2003 was a nice package, but suffered on account of mobility, sharing account information and scalability.
Office 2007 has addressed these issues and is now an amazing product. To see what it can do I strongly recommend you go and watch the small flash demo at http://office.microsoft.com/search/redir.aspx?AssetID=HA101759211033&Origin=HH101878561033&CTT=5 . When you load it onto your system (yes, I have it loaded on my work system connected to Exchange) you get the following mail that explains what it can do. I have bolded the sections I think are the most important.
One of the really interesting things is that many customers say they want some form of contact management system, but are far less interested in the marketing side. When you drill down into this, it is often because they consider it too hard and complex. Once they have seen how easy it is to deliver a campaign professionally with Office 2007, it is often the area that excites them the most and BCM can manage and monitor this for them, ensuring they understand what gives them value and that they follow up with customers as needed.
If your customers could do with a bit of this - then Office 2007 is the product for them.
Welcome to Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 with Business Contact Manager, which combines the familiar appearance of Outlook with great new and updated features.
Feature Overview
New Features!
Customization - Tailor Business Contact Manager for Outlook to fit your business needs by customizing forms, lists, and reports. Marketing Campaigns - Manage and measure the effectiveness of the marketing content that you create. Promote your brand, quickly see which Marketing Campaigns help you generate more business, and improve customer satisfaction. If you have created Marketing Campaigns before, Business Contact Manager for Outlook helps you distribute the Marketing Campaigns more effectively. If you're new to marketing your business, Business Contact Manager for Outlook guides you through the process. Business Projects and Project Tasks - Manage your time and business better by using the Business Project feature. Business Projects give you a single place to store all related project information, tasks, and assignments so that you can quickly see who's doing what project task, and its due date. Easily share project information across your company. For example, you can assign project tasks to colleagues, which they can see in their To-Do Bar. Offline - Take your data with you on your portable computer so that you can see how your business is doing at any time. View reports, follow up with customers, create new Business Projects, or just update Account and Business Contact information. When you return to your office, it is easy to synchronize the information. Business Contact Manager for Outlook E-Mail Marketing Service - By combining the power of the E-mail Marketing Service* with Business Contact Manager for Outlook, you can send specifically targeted e-mailings to your customers, and keep track of the responses to your e-mailings. The E-mail Marketing Service is free to try and provides a cost-effective and powerful way to reach your customers in a personal way. To use the E-mail Marketing Service, create a Marketing Campaign, and then select the Campaign Type as E-mail and the Delivery Method as E-mail Marketing Service. Home Page - Get a complete view of critical information through the centralized home page. This customizable home page helps you summarize your important business metrics and prioritize business tasks. Leads or prospects - Differentiate leads or prospects from existing Business Contacts, and create customized reports.
Search Folders - Use Search Folders to gather Accounts, Business Contacts, Opportunities, Business Projects, or communication history items into a folder based on your criteria, such as all Business Contacts with an Excellent rating. Improved Features!
- Reports - Use one of the more than 50 reports to see the state of Accounts, Business Contacts, leads, Opportunities, activities, Business Projects, and Marketing Campaigns. Use the new report filtering capabilities to easily sort and filter data, and then export it to Microsoft Office Excel 2007 for further analysis.
- Integration with accounting applications - When you combine Business Contact Manager for Outlook with supported accounting applications, your Business Contact information and financial history are seamlessly integrated. Sales opportunities can be easily converted into quotes, sales orders, and invoices in your accounting application. Go to the Microsoft Office Accounting Web site to see a list of supported accounting applications.
- Sharing of customer data and communication history across your business - Sharing Accounts, Business Contacts, leads or prospects, and Opportunities gives you and your colleagues a rich view of all communications that your company has had with each customer. This feature gives everyone the shared customer history data that they need to respond faster and serve customers better.
- Opportunities - Quickly organize, manage, and track all of your Opportunities, including details such as sales stage, potential value, and estimated close date, so you can assess potential sales and make better-informed business decisions.
- Communication History - Enjoy immediate access to the history of your customer interactions. Items stored in the Communication History folder include business notes, phone logs, Opportunities, Business Projects, tasks, e-mail messages, appointments, and files. It's easy to share this communication history with your colleagues.
- Import and Export - Easily import and export data from or to various applications and formats, including ACT!, QuickBooks, Access, Excel and many others. The enhanced mapping capabilities make it simple to transfer information from other applications that may have different fields than Business Contact Manager for Outlook.
*The E-mail Marketing Service is available only in select markets.
Posted
Fri, Nov 24 2006 6:28 AM
by
David Overton