Smartlife

Managing your contacts isn’t as simple as it used to be: you need to know your contacts’ office phone numbers, cell phone numbers, email addresses, websites, and even Twitter profiles to have a good chance of being able to get in touch with them. An old-fashioned address book just can’t keep up. On the other hand, many customer-relationship management (CRM) tools are a little bit overkill for someone who just would have relied on a Rolodex back in the day. These tools provide a happy medium.

1. Google Contacts: Gmail

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Just as Google has come to own a significant portion of my online life, the same can be also said about many businesses around the world. Continuing with this trend, the Goliath of a search engine recently launched the Google Apps Marketplace, allowing third-party developers to take advantage of the increasingly powerful Google Apps platform.

Conventional wisdom will have businesses running their own internal servers, but Google Apps can put all of that information “in the cloud.” By doing so, employees can access the equivalent of…

Good customer relationship management software simplifies and automates contacting your clients: most provide you with a clear record of what your past communications have included, as well as making sure that you and anyone you work with are on the same page for each client. Some CRM software even lets you send out automatic emails or newsletters. There are several desktop CRM software packages, but many of them simply aren’t comparable to web-based applications. Desktop CRM software often requires synchronizing and has limited usefulness if you aren’t at your desk.…