Re: Master Contact Database

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On Jun 9, 2:11 pm, Jason Vance <Jason Va...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
I work in a small office with about 10 people and we have about 5 different
places where duplicate contact information is saved.  As you can imagine,
this makes integrity of information nearly impossible.  We are trying to
simplify this by having one central location for ALL our contact information.
 We would like this list to be the only thing that needs to be updated.  It
seems like we should be able to use Access or Outlook Contacts or Excel, but
I am not sure how to link all of these to retrieve information from the same
place.  Am i missing something?  Or am i expecting too much out of these
programs?  Is there ANY software that would allow us to do this?  I'm sure we
aren't the only organization who has run into this difficulty, but i don't
know where to look for this information.  

We have the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 for Small Business Server and the
Office 2003 suite as well.  We have over 500 contacts in our Outlook Contacts
and about 50 distribution lists; we have all of this stored in a nice
Publisher format for printing purposes; we also have this all on an Excel
spread*** for use with a database and the web and for sorting; and we have
some of it stored in an Access database as well (i think an early failed
attempt to simplify).  Please help us to get this information stored in one
place.  Thanks!

There are multiple options, some free and others will charge you. I
take it you want it in a format that allows you to leverage existing
setups such as mailing lists, reports, etc... Let me tell you of some
options you have from various points of view.

1. Look for group based Contact Mgmt List software by searching
Goooge. If you just search for "contact management" the second result
is a program called Act 2009 which has been around for 15+ years.
Everyone would install the software locally and point to a central
database. You can link Excel/Access to if you need to, but many of
them have labeling capabilities for mailings and so forth.

2. Companies like SalesForce.com offer the ability to store contact
information and leverage as needed.

3. If you store all of your contacts in a Access file and put it on a
shared drive both Excel and other programs query against them. This is
a simple free solution.

4. If you store all of your contacts on a SQL server you can have
Excel, Access or other programs query against them. I would only do
this if you would like to consider storing future information in a
central database. This option is a bit expensive ($500-$900+).

5. LinkedIn.com and Plaxo.com - (This may work) If everyone uses
Outlook and they installed a piece of software that would synch their
contacts to a central server (for free) and everyone was signed into
the same account (everyone@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) everyone would synch the
same information. If anyone added a new contact everyone else would
get it on their Outlook Contacts. This method is a poor person's way
of doing it, but if it meets your needs why not. I synch my work
contact with both LindedIn and Plaxo to their central server and my
machine at home synches to the same account.

6. A bit more involved would be to keep those contacts in on your
email server in a Public folder that everyone contributed to.
.

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