Contact Management System
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Contact managers are programs that enable people to keep track of their associates and tasks. Contact managers are used by salespeople, customer service representatives, and managers.
Contact managers are related to calendars, but integrate email and personal file information (phone numbers and addresses), with task lists and histories of interactions.
There are two types of contact managers: Software that you install on your personal computer or intranet and hosted applications (ASP).
Contact management software
The market for contact management software has weakened since the late 1990s, when Microsoft integrated basic contact management features into its Outlook email and PIM program. For enterprise users, Microsoft also offers Business Contact Manager for Outlook. Even on the Macintosh platform, Apple began including PIM, calendar, and to-do applications with its operating system in 2002. Many developers of contact managers have consequently gone out of business or been taken over by other companies.
In order to differentiate themselves from Outlook, more fully featured contact managers have moved into the realm of customer relationship management (CRM) software.
Hosted contact managers
The main difference from a network (client server) contact manager above is that the business data and documents are kept in a server farm at a business ISP (Internet Service Provider). This enables staff to access their data at home or when away from the office using just a connection to the Internet, and without necessitate the extra set-up required for a VPN (Virtual Private Network).
Personal Contact Managers
New services have evolved as personal contact managers. They have made strides to avoid similarities to older more popular contact management systems, whose software is made for business grade management. These personal contact managers are becoming popular with smaller businesses and home businesses, who don't need extra features, just the "pen and paper" version of the web.