Maestro Technologies - Intelligent management software for the construction industry.

Managing your contacts

These days, it is difficult to properly manage the huge number of entities and individuals we interact with. While communication has become simple and easy, sometimes it just seems very difficult to find contact information for individuals or companies you need to reach. One of the reasons for this is that all this contact information is scattered all over the place and, without some form of central organization, we are not sure about the information we have. Let’s look back a bit at the source of this confusion.

In the beginning...

Do you remember when all of your contacts were centralized in a Cardex system? Searching was of course bit awkward and slow, especially if you had many contacts. Furthermore, very often all of the data had to be copied to your accounting system if the contacts in question were customers or suppliers of your company.

Business card holders and personal agendas allow you to group and sort the cards you have collected from people you have met. But the precious information they contain remains difficult to access for lack of a good filing system. It is only accessible to the owner and cannot be shared by all.

But now...

Think back to our initial comments. Is there a more efficient device to replace all of these tools?

The personal directory is on its way out. At least, it may not survive given the popularity of personal electronic agendas and the latest cellular phones. Who still feels like consulting their paper agenda when personal and professional contacts are just a mouse click away? But be careful because the information can become unsynchronized from the central files at the office. If this happens, its usefulness could be affected.

Culturally, business cards are still a reliable instrument. They describe us accurately and remind us of those who have left us their business card. Often we refer to someone’s business card when we remember a long ago meeting. Cardholders are therefore still useful, but why not scan the contents and save the information to an electronic address book. With a good keyword-based filing system, you will be able to find them easily.

A centralized contact management system

Now, what happens at the office? Do you still use ancient filing cabinets to save contact information believing you can access the records quickly and easily? Maybe, but this is not the only place where you can find this information. They probably also exist in your Outlook contacts since it is inevitable that you sometimes send e-mail messages to them. Are they also your suppliers? In that case, they are in your list of suppliers in your accounting system. If they are also your customers, a second entry is necessary. Maybe you never really conducted business with some of these contacts, but you want to keep their information in case you need it one day. You also want to know the name of the contact person at each of these companies and their extension number.

It is also helpful to manage changes and personnel turnover. A supplier may move, a customer’s telephone number may change, or a customer may open a new branch. Your contact of twenty years at XYZ company may change jobs and start working for a competitor. Keeping printed lists in electronic or accounting format up-to-date can be a real challenge when you have to deal with hundreds or even thousands of contacts.

One day, the unavoidable questions will surface:

• Can we keep all of this sensitive information in a single location?
• Can we stay up-to-date without having to make the same corrections several times?
• Can we conduct centralized searches that include all of our contacts?
• Can we send e-mail messages to a large number of recipients at one time?
• Can we synchronize a list of Outlook contacts with a central list?

With maestro*, all of this is possible with the Contact Management module. All of your contact information is centralized in one location. A contact person becomes an entity. A history of e-mail messages sent is saved. You can easily select multiple contacts that meet certain criteria and send simultaneous messages. Note that Exchange still remains the central point for information sharing since many mobile tools and other applications are integrated. This means that the maestro* Contact Management module synchronizes contacts in Exchange, which are then shared by all employees in the company. Synchronization with Outlook ensures perfect coherence between your management system and other office automation applications. Why wait to retire your manual filing system?