Small Business Nirvana

  • Thread starter Chris Leeds, MVP-FrontPage
  • Start date
C

Chris Leeds, MVP-FrontPage

Small Business Nirvana:
Outlook 2003, Small Business Accounting 2006, and Business Contact Manager 2
Initial Impressions:


I've recently been messing with some MS stuff and wanted to share what I
found.

Some time back I tried Business Contact Manager (BCM) and didn't really "get
it" BUT recently installing Small Business Accounting 2006 (SBA 2006) and
realizing how awesome it'd be to have to enter people's info only once for a
contact card and an accounting software system forced me to look at BCM a
little harder.



This time I downloaded BCM2 free from MS (free to everyone with Office 2003
Small Business or Professional Edition).

This version is much nicer than the previous and whether it was easier to
"get" because of interface changes or my mindset from having first installed
SBA, it's pretty nice.

I think MS ought to simply include BCM with SBA and if the client machine
has an appropriate version of Office and ask them if they want it installed.



You can link phone calls to contacts and tell the accounting software to
bill them, you can link emails, create invoices right out of the Outlook
interface, etc.

This combination of BCM and SBA is totally awesome!



Some of my early SBA findings are these:

It's the nicest user interface that I've used (Peachtree and
Quicken/QuickBooks).

It's really easy to set up.

It does a stellar job of sucking up Excel (.xls) files and creating
accounting records.

For instance, I opened Peachtree and had it spit out the customer list as an
..xls, then had SBA slurp it up, very easy and flexible.



That Peachtree to SBA conversion inspired me to try it a little harder.

I went to my online shopping cart and had it export that customer list (just
html on a web page) right clicked it opened the table in excel, made a few
changes because of how SBA was expecting to see the data (not as first name,
last name separate fields, doesn't seem to want a customer ID #, etc) then
had SBA suck that up.



The reason I did it twice is because sometimes someone will order something
on the site with a credit card, that makes it into Peachtree because that's
how I clear the credit card charge, but if they use PayPal or something
there isn't anything that makes me add them to Peachtree.



SBA dealt with the duplicates pretty well, and it was easy to delete the
duplicate records that did make it through.



Not too bad, about 20 minutes and my client list from Peachtree accounting
and the web based shopping cart were compiled into the SBA accounting
system.



That'd be a pretty good thing by itself but open Outlook, hit business
tools/ accounting tools/ set up connection to accounting and BAM now all
those customer records are right there in the outlook interface as not only
accounts, but also contacts (which is something that baffled me when I tried
to use BCM without the SBA but is crystal clear after working just a little
in SBA).



This rig kicks butt!



I'm going to try out the credit card clearing interface in SBA well as a few
other features, see how BCM synchronizes with a Pocket PC phone addition,
etc but this particular combination of Outlook, BCM, and SBA look like a
total winner.



Expect more reviews shortly!




--
Chris Leeds,
Microsoft MVP-FrontPage

ContentSeed: great tool for web masters,
a fantastic convenience for site owners.
http://contentseed.com/
--
 
S

Svend

Chris,

So does BCM2 actually work as a multi user contacts database? I ask because
the previous version was strictly single user only. Even in an SBS2003
environment with the patch that was intended to make DCM work you still can't
work with a shared database.
Is this something that SBA adds to it?

Franky I think the current DCM suck big time. It lulls small business users
into a false sense of hope and then they find that everything they've built
up cannot be used as the business grows.

Svend.
 
C

Chris Leeds, MVP-FrontPage

From what I hear BCM is supposed to be a single user system. I don't think
SBA changes that, except I know you can have multiple users on the SBA so if
they're pulling info from BCM I guess it's something.
My understanding is that if you want a multi user system you need CRM.

about the sucking...
I would have to say that the previous BCM sucked big time but this BCM2 in
combination with SBA doesn't suck at all. :)

--
Chris Leeds,
Microsoft MVP-FrontPage

ContentSeed: great tool for web masters,
a fantastic convenience for site owners.
http://contentseed.com/
--
 
B

Bob Cooley [MSFT]

Guys, if you take a look at the details on the v2 update download page you
can see what new features are added to the update. Here's a snippet:

Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager Update includes the following new
and improved functionality:
a.. Share your customer information and sales opportunities
b.. Synchronize customer information with your Microsoft Windows
Mobile-based Pocket PC (available as a separate download for select
languages)
c.. Use with Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003, Microsoft
Exchange Server 2003, and hosted Exchange Server 2003
d.. Integration with Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting 2006*
The download url for the update is
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...42-6dc5-4922-9dfb-1c82237d6b62&DisplayLang=en.

The download url for the PocketPC add-in is
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...18-C310-4599-81D1-558CF385ED88&displaylang=en.

--
Regards,

Bob Cooley, [MSFT]


This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
 
T

Tim P via OfficeKB.com

Chris,

I too share your excitement about the the potential of BCM with the new Small
Business Accounting package. Microsoft is definitely going the right
direction with this in my opinion. Now, if they would only be willing to
address several of the laughable non-supported BCM functions that so many
small business users require from even a rudimentary contact management
application. This would include things like basic form and field
customizability, greater sharing ability among users, allowing multiple
account linking to a business contact, easier email merge mass mailing, etc.
While no application will ever be perfect, there are some definite glaring
weaknesses of BCM that remain and if addressed in a timely manner could
create a real winning combination.

I like the potential of BCM but in its currently limited functional state,
we're still a bit away from Small Business Nirvana!

-THP
 
T

Tim P via OfficeKB.com

Additional comment:

To expand upon your own words ...

"...about the sucking...
I would have to say that the previous BCM sucked big time but this BCM2 in
combination with SBA doesn't suck at all. :)"

My words would be that BCM2 doesn't suck "AS MUCH" as before.

Suck not at all? I would have to disagree on that one. We have a ways to go
there in my opinion.

Here's to the future ... surprise us Microsoft!

-THP


Tim said:
Chris,

I too share your excitement about the the potential of BCM with the new Small
Business Accounting package. Microsoft is definitely going the right
direction with this in my opinion. Now, if they would only be willing to
address several of the laughable non-supported BCM functions that so many
small business users require from even a rudimentary contact management
application. This would include things like basic form and field
customizability, greater sharing ability among users, allowing multiple
account linking to a business contact, easier email merge mass mailing, etc.
While no application will ever be perfect, there are some definite glaring
weaknesses of BCM that remain and if addressed in a timely manner could
create a real winning combination.

I like the potential of BCM but in its currently limited functional state,
we're still a bit away from Small Business Nirvana!

-THP
Small Business Nirvana:
Outlook 2003, Small Business Accounting 2006, and Business Contact Manager 2
[quoted text clipped - 82 lines]
 
C

Chris Leeds, MVP-FrontPage

agreed but, I remember what FrontPage 98 was like and I know what fp 2003 is
like, plus I already know what the _next_ FrontPage will be like, so I've
got great hopes.

--
Chris Leeds,
Microsoft MVP-FrontPage

ContentSeed: great tool for web masters,
a fantastic convenience for site owners.
http://contentseed.com/
--
 
C

Chris Leeds, MVP-FrontPage

yah, the more I mess with it the more I would have to agree with you.
I guess it's an opportunity to get the VS 2005 installed and start hacking
around! LOL

--
Chris Leeds,
Microsoft MVP-FrontPage

ContentSeed: great tool for web masters,
a fantastic convenience for site owners.
http://contentseed.com/
--
Tim P via OfficeKB.com said:
Additional comment:

To expand upon your own words ...

"...about the sucking...
I would have to say that the previous BCM sucked big time but this BCM2 in
combination with SBA doesn't suck at all. :)"

My words would be that BCM2 doesn't suck "AS MUCH" as before.

Suck not at all? I would have to disagree on that one. We have a ways to go
there in my opinion.

Here's to the future ... surprise us Microsoft!

-THP


Tim said:
Chris,

I too share your excitement about the the potential of BCM with the new Small
Business Accounting package. Microsoft is definitely going the right
direction with this in my opinion. Now, if they would only be willing to
address several of the laughable non-supported BCM functions that so many
small business users require from even a rudimentary contact management
application. This would include things like basic form and field
customizability, greater sharing ability among users, allowing multiple
account linking to a business contact, easier email merge mass mailing, etc.
While no application will ever be perfect, there are some definite glaring
weaknesses of BCM that remain and if addressed in a timely manner could
create a real winning combination.

I like the potential of BCM but in its currently limited functional state,
we're still a bit away from Small Business Nirvana!

-THP
Small Business Nirvana:
Outlook 2003, Small Business Accounting 2006, and Business Contact
Manager 2
[quoted text clipped - 82 lines]
 
T

Tim P via OfficeKB.com

Yeah Chris,

Those "great hopes" are what keep many of us around with BCM.

-THP

agreed but, I remember what FrontPage 98 was like and I know what fp 2003 is
like, plus I already know what the _next_ FrontPage will be like, so I've
got great hopes.

--
Chris Leeds,
Microsoft MVP-FrontPage

ContentSeed: great tool for web masters,
a fantastic convenience for site owners.
http://contentseed.com/
--
[quoted text clipped - 101 lines]
 

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