PIMTech

As you grow up, developing a social life or building a career, you make contacts that include family, friends, colleagues or partners…

From paper business cards or address book, to web social networks (like facebook, whatsapp or linkedin) including contacts app we use nowadays on our smartphone or computers, there are many contacts management solutions out there. You probably have contacts information spread in various location (files, web or app). They are most likely duplicates and maybe not secured.

Are you making use of your network in an optimized way ? How much time do you spend daily juggling between various solutions of contact management ?

Contact management solutions should do that for you. They should include features helping you managing efficiently your personal and professional network.

In addition to basic item information, contact information includes

• Name (full name, last name, alias…), Photo, Phone numbers or Email addresses or Postal addresses, Interests
• Search and update contact information
• Maintain and organize contacts between family, friends and colleagues
• Facilitate the use of your contact info (email, phone, address) for interactions (calendar events, communications)
• Manage groups of contacts, such as a black list of contacts

In addition to basic management features, contact management features are :

• Centralize contacts and merge duplicates, by importing contacts from various source (including emails, files, social networks for example)
• Scan information from business cards 
• Secure your contact information with strong encryption
• Track interactions, follow up for changes in your network to eventually keep in touch or clean up
• Export / import contacts as vCard format
• Draw relationships between your contacts (such as genealogy tree)

Options to manage contact may include : 

• Default country phone code
• Name display format

Here is a review of the still existing solutions implementing basic features.

Google Contacts : Available on the web, but can be used on many platform thanks to its API.

Finally some other domains integrate well with Contact management including :

• Message management
• Task management
• Event management
• Document management