Best way to deal with contacts and commercial opportunities

[Big Passeron]

Sorry for the misleading title.
We are using Exchange Server 2007 and Outlook 2003/2007.
I'd like to create company's address book by using a Contact Public Folder,
containing all our commercial contacts.
I'd like these contacts to be assigned to different categories (geographical
area, customer, product types of interest and so on)
Any contact may potentially belong to more than one category.
At the end I will need to send customized newsletters and promote marketing
campaigns, depending on contact's categories.

I was looking for Business Contact Manager, but I don't if this is my best
choice.
Also, I need something that can work in a very centralized manner (i.e. I
don't want every sales manager to use its own contacts database).
Can you provide me with some good advice?

Thanks a lot

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

How many salesmen would be accessing it? BCM can be shared by a small
number of users.

A public folder and categories will work fine, if you only need it as a
contact list. If you need more CRM data then BCM or similar would be better.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]

Outlook & Exchange Solutions Center: http://www.slipstick.com/

Outlook Tips by email:
mailto:[email protected]

EMO - a weekly newsletter about Outlook and Exchange:
mailto:[email protected]

Poll: What version of Outlook do you use?
http://forums.slipstick.com/showthread.php?t=27072

 

[Big Passeron]

Hi Diane,
only 7-8 persons are going to access it for commercial purposes (mailing
lists and so on).
About 50 people need to access the contacts just to retrieve mail adddresses.
I've tried to set up a shared database, but I fail to connect from Outlook
to that database.
That's what I've tried to do on a Win 2003 Server:

- Install SQL Server 2008 -> Unsupported
- Install SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition configuring an instance called
MSSQLBIZ and let it listening on port 5356
- Installing SQL Server 2005 Express Edition Italian since Outlook clients
are gonna be in this language
- Using Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2007 Database Tool on the
server to create a DB called MSSmallBusiness and granting my domain account
the right permissions to access the DB

The DB is correctly shared, but everytime I try to make Outlook 2007
retrieve data from this DB I get a message informing that there is no
Business Contact Manager DB on the server.
I've tried to connect with:

- Server
- Server,5356
- Server\MSSQLBIZ
- Server\MSSQLBIZ,5356

but the error message is still the same.

No need to say that I can connect using SQLCMD.
No firewalls are active.

Any idea?

How many salesmen would be accessing it? BCM can be shared by a small
number of users.

A public folder and categories will work fine, if you only need it as a
contact list. If you need more CRM data then BCM or similar would be better.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]

Outlook & Exchange Solutions Center: http://www.slipstick.com/

Outlook Tips by email:
mailto:[email protected]

EMO - a weekly newsletter about Outlook and Exchange:
mailto:[email protected]

Poll: What version of Outlook do you use?
http://forums.slipstick.com/showthread.php?t=27072

Sorry for the misleading title.
We are using Exchange Server 2007 and Outlook 2003/2007.
I'd like to create company's address book by using a Contact Public
Folder,
containing all our commercial contacts.
I'd like these contacts to be assigned to different categories
(geographical
area, customer, product types of interest and so on)
Any contact may potentially belong to more than one category.
At the end I will need to send customized newsletters and promote
marketing
campaigns, depending on contact's categories.

I was looking for Business Contact Manager, but I don't if this is my best
choice.
Also, I need something that can work in a very centralized manner (i.e. I
don't want every sales manager to use its own contacts database).
Can you provide me with some good advice?

Thanks a lot

.