Contact Management. (information management system) (evaluation)
by Peer Plaut

Success in a sales office hinges on productivity. Beacon's Contact Management provides an individual salesperson or networked sales office a way to manage daily sales calls more productively. Contact Management provides reams of useful information to salespeople and managers.

With a simple, one-line menu across the bottom of the screen, Contact Management proves simple to use. If you need to see additional program options, a simple touch of the F1 key brings up a full-blown menu/help screen, showing the software's options. As sales calls come in or go out, salespeople will have complete information about prospects or customers right at their fingertips.

Having this information readily available is much more important when you have incoming calls and don't have time to prepare your presentation. When a customer calls, there's no need to tell him to hang on for a few minutes while you frantically fumble through a dozen legal pads, looking for what you last discussed on the telephone. Just pull the appropriate information up on Contact Management, and then, before taking an order from your customer and scheduling delivery or making an appointment, you can quickly key up your calendar to check for any conflicts on your end.

Contact Management also provides you with preconfigured reports. You can use this information in a sales office to analyze top salespeople. Whom do they call? How many calls a day do they make? How often do they contact their customers? All this information makes this software an invaluable tool for the salesperson or sales office and will likely boost productivity. Though priced a bit high for many home users, those with the capital and the need shouldn't miss this opportunity to improve efficieny.