Technology paved the way to make a lot of things easier and faster. Take for instance how you handle your people network. Written phonebooks and printed yellow pages are as obsolete as the rotary phone.
Nowadays, everything is almost digitalized. Though business cards are still relevant, the rest of the contact information exchange involves almost no pen and paper at all. Hence, new systems are developed during this age of information. One of which is contact management.
What is contact management?
Contact management pertains to the systems and practices designed to handle the business network communication information. This involves storage, accessibility, and security of the contact details of prospects, leads, and customers, as well as that of the suppliers, employees, and other stakeholders.
Businesses and even individuals need contact management to take care of the ever-growing number of contacts. There are several types of contact management tools available in the market for such.
What are the types of contact management?
There are different ways to manage your contacts. This would all be depending on your company’s requirements.
Collaborative spreadsheet
This is the rudimentary manner of managing your leads and clients. The traditional spreadsheet may be the go-to for startups and small businesses. It requires almost no cost to use and no needed training for integration.
One of the downsides is the lack of integration into messaging channels. Manual copy/pasting required to the recipient field means a tiresome repetitive task. Another disadvantage is how difficult to maintain especially when a team is working on it. Duplicate entries, accidental alterations, or even deliberate deletions easily degrade the integrity of the database.
Shared company directory
This refers mostly to an Active Directory, LDAP, or Google Workspace domain directory. This type of contact management commonly contains the employees’ information, mailing lists, and some external contacts. These contacts are generally accessible in emails and intranets but rarely on mobile contact apps or other applications.
Unfortunately, the contacts are typically not available when the user is offline or on mobile devices. Besides, it is a rigid system wherein only IT personnel can create, edit, and update the database.
Customer relationship management (CRM)
Contact management is one of the basic functionalities of a CRM system. However, it may also incorporate lead generation, sales forecasting, and workflow automation.
These other features make CRM significantly more expensive than stand-alone contact management apps. It is impractical to spend money on CRM if you only needed it for contact management. Some of its programs may be too complex or still not necessary for your business.