Big Contacts

Workflow added to Big Contacts

There are many times where it would make sense to divide a task up amongst different members of your team. Let's say you have a process for signing up new clients. Maybe a sales assistant has to draw up new documents. Then a account manager needs to send the docs to the client. Then a sales assistant follows up to retrieve the docs. Then an office manager files the new docs and does the system setup. Finally an account manager makes a phone call to welcome the new client. This type of thing can be very easy to mess up.

With Big Contacts you can create a multi-step task template and assign different steps to different members of your team. Go to 'Admin' and look for 'Tasks'. Then create a new task and 'Edit Custom Steps'. For each step, set up who on the team the step is to be assigned to.

Now, when you have a new client, simply click on 'Assign a New Task' and select the task template for new clients. This will properly set everything up. Whoever is responsible for the first step will have the task assigned to them. When they complete the task, the system will automatically re-assign the task to the next person in line.

Build a workflow for the things that you do and never let complex processes fail and slip through the cracks!

Letters now appear in History

One of our users asked if the letters that they send to contacts can show up in history. A great idea! I'm surprised we didn't think of that when we set up the letters section. Anyway, it is now added. When you send a letter, it appears in the contact's history. Use the feedback box and keep those terrific ideas coming!

Using Big Contacts for Lead Generation

Did you know that you can add contacts to Big Contacts directly from your website? Many people use their web site to collect sales leads. Others use their web site to have people sign up for newsletters or join a new service. You can take this cusotmer data directly into Big Contacts without having to retype it. And it is extremely easy. Just configure a few settings on the 'admin' page in Big Contacts and POST the data from your form to Big Contacts.

You can also create a task for someone on your team each time the form is posted. Maybe you want an inside sales perosn to follow up. Or a marketing person to mail a brochure. Set it up one time and forget about it.

You can also create a new sales opportunity when the form is posted. Use this to track sales leads.

More information is available on the Big Contacts support wiki.

Sales Plans/Quotas added to the Sales Manager

You can now enter a sales budget or quota for each user and track progress on the sales manager. Set a monthly quota for each user that you want to have one on the 'admin' page in the 'Sales Opportunities' section. Then look at the Sales Manager. In the sales projection area, you will see the projection, along with the quota for the period and the percent to plan.

Another improvement to the Sales Manager is that you can now look at the sales opportunities and sales projection for any member of your team. Just click the circle next to the team member and the data will be updated to reflect only their oportunities and their quota/budget.

One more change that may be helpful. When you configure your 'Products', you can enter a 'Price'. Then when creating a new opportunity, you can enter a quantity and the size of the opportunity is calculated for you.

Let us know what you think of the changes and how we can continue to make the Sales Manager work better for you.

Sending Letters with Big Contacts

Do you like to regularly send letters to some of your contacts? Maybe a thank you letter? Or maybe a cover letter for your brochure? Do you wish it was easier to create and print these letters?

With Big Contacts you can upload and save your favorite letters. When you wish to send a letter, first search for the contact. Then look for the dropdown list of your letters you have uploaded next to the Word icon in the business card. Select the letter you want, click the Word icon and the letter will be downloaded as a Word document.

You can use the 'formal name' and 'salutation' fields for the contact. If you save a formal name such as 'Dr. and Mrs. Joseph A. Smith' and/or a salutation such as 'Joe and Nancy', those will be used. Otherwise, the contacts first and last name will be used.

It is easy! Try it out.

Big Contacts compared to Highrise

Here are some of the things that we have noticed about Highrise compared to Big Contacts.

(It is certainly possible that this is not 100% accurate. And features do change over time.)

Highrise
Contacts	Users	File Storage	SSL	Price
250	2	None	No	Free
500	3	250MB	No	$12/month
5,000	6	500MB	No	$24/month
20,000	15	3GB	Yes	$49/month

 

Big Contacts
Contacts	Users	File Storage	SSL	Price
500	2	500MB	Yes	Free
1,000	3	1GB	Yes	$12/month
10,000	6	10GB	Yes	$30/month
25,000	12	25GB	Yes	$70/month

With Highrise, you have to pay $49/month just to get SSL. Highrise does not think you need security if you're not paying a lot for their service. ALL plans including the Free Edition of Big Contacts include SSL. Your data is encrypted when sent over the Internet. Not so with Highrise.

Highrise is a wiki for people data. It is not really a contact manager. It is free form, Big Contacts is more highly structured. Highrise is not very well organized once you have a lot of information,  files, tasks, notes, etc about a contact. Highrise does not have any reports. Big Contacts has extensive reporting capability and integration with Excel. With Highrise, there is no way to get information into an Excel spreadsheet for mail merge or any other need.

Basecamp can only import contacts from Outlook, ACT9, vCard and Basecamp. You cannot import custom data. With Big Contacts you can import data from a CSV file, a Tab delimited file, Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Palm Desktop, Mac Address Book, vCard, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and GMail.

Highrise does not have a calendar. You cannot see when you have met with a contact or when you have upcoming meetings with them. With Big Contacts, you get a full team calendar and can schedule meetings for anyone on your team. You maintain a full contact history including all your meetings.

Highrise is limited in the area of tasks. In Big Contacts, tasks and to-dos can be assigned to a specific person.  You can see all of the tasks assigned to you in the 'My Tasks' section  of Big Contacts. Big Contacts has multi-step tasks. Big Contacts allows you to quickly add asks by letting you create common tasks in advance (including multi-step tasks). You can track in a contact's history when a task was completed and who completed it. None of this is available with Highrise. 

You can also track your team's activity. Big Contacts 'Recent Activity' link lets you see everything that is going on with your team or narrow it down to a specific person or time period. There is nothing like this in Highrise making it diffcult to manage a team.

With Big Contacts, you can view tons of contact details in the "business card" in the center of the screen - it is quite easy to find a phone number or email address. You can also save tags, interests - all sorts of data about a contact. You can have multiple user-defined contact types. With Highrise you have to dig around for basic stuff like a phone number.

Big Contacts is all about having a well organized approach to running a  business or sales team and tracking all of the people and events and tasks that make your business run well. Unlike Highrise, Big Contacts allows you to track sales opportunities and define your own products and your own sales pipeline with a sophisticated sales manager.

Hihgrise and Big Contacts both let you upload files and attach them to a contact. In Big Contacts, you can add a file description and we track when you uploaded the file any information you saved about. All the files are in  one place in a table. With Highrise you have to scroll down the page looking for files. If you send an email with Big Contacts, any attacments are saved with the contact's file area.

We will keep adding to this list as we learn more about the differences between Big Contacts and Highrise.

Table View - Better Manage your Contacts

This week we released Big Contacts Table View. With the contacts table view, you can edit a group of contacts, delete multiple contacts, or merge several contacts into one. You can also assign a task to several contacts at the same time. This is not something you will use all of the time, but is a great way to maintain your contact data.

Update: We now have a flash video you can watch to demonstrate how the Table View works. Click here to see the demo

We get asked all the time how to handle duplicates. Let's say you have three identical John Smith contacts. Pull up the contact table, type Smith into the last name filter and John into the first name filter. You will then see all the contacts named John Smith. Click the checkbox next to each of the contacts that you want to merge and click the Merge button. They will be combined into a single contact preserving any meetings, notes, history or sales opportunities that you have created for each of them.

Maybe you want to delete a bunch of contacts at a company that you no longer do business with. Open the contact table and type the company name into the company name filter. You will then see all the contacts for that company. Click on select all. Maybe you want to keep a few, click to uncheck the box next to their names. Then click on the Delete button.

Here's another common problem. You wish to change the contact type of a group of contacts. After opening the table view, select the contacts that you which to change the contact type for and click the checkbox next to their name. Next, below the contact type header, select the new contact type from the dropdown. Then click replace. All of the selected contacts should now show the new contact type in their contact type field. Finally, click save and all of the selected contacts will have the new contact type.

One more great use for the Contact Table. Maybe you want your assistant to call each of your clients and thank them for their business. Click on Display:All and sort by Contact Type. Then next to each contact with Contact Type equal to Client, check the box next to their name. Then click the link Assign a Task to Selected Contacts. Enter the details of the task, making sure to assign the task to your assistant, and then click assign task to selected contacts. Each contact that you selected will now have this new task assigned.

We hope this new feature will help you to better manage your contacts and make Big Contacts even easier to use.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Here is a feature you rarely see on web sites or web services - Keyboard Shortcuts!

In Big Contacts, instead of looking for and then clicking on the link that says 'Add a New Contact', you can instead use a keyboard and simply type CTRL-SHIFT-N. This will bring up the 'Note' popup. Then just start typing the note. Tab and enter details. Tab again and type 'Enter' and you have added a note without ever leaving the keyboard.

If you're like me and would rather use the keyboard as much as possible. This will really save you time.

To see the list of keyboard shortcuts at any time, just type the CTRL key.

Big Contacts is out of beta!

This morning, we pushed the button and launched the full production version of Big Contacts. It is exciting to finally be out of beta and officially launched. Thanks to the thousands of registered users and the huge number of people that provided us tremendous feedback and ideas during our open beta period. Thank you - you have helped make Big Contacts what it is - the premier web based contact manager.

You may notice a few new things that we did not have before.

• Edit in place - you can click on an item in the business card and make changes right there. Click on the 'edit-me' icon to make changes to phone numbers, email address and websites.
• Improved import wizard - start by telling the wizard what you are importing from. We  provide extensive help on how to get your data. We then directly map data based on what you are importing from. Try it out!
• Internationalization - we added many new timezones. We have added several new date and time formats. We have options for different currencies. We support more international character sets. And we have phone number formatting.
• Advanced Search - is now better organized and easier to use

There is much more help available.  And, we have cleaned up the interface in a number of places that you might not even notice, but wanted to make Big Contacts as clean and easy to use as possible.

Big Contacts API Released

We're excited to today announce the availability of our first REST API. An API is an alternative  way to access your data without going through our web application. You can write your own interface for your data. Or, you can use your data in Mash Ups. See Teqlo for an exciting example of how mashups can be used to create really neat and useful applications.

See the Big Contacts API Wiki for more details.

Right now, the API works only with contact data. You can authenticate, do searches, pull down data, update data and add contacts. We will be adding  calendar functions to the API in a few days. Over the next month or so, we will include more aspects of our system in the API.

It is available - have at it! And, let us know if we can help you with using the API. To get started, you will need an API ID and password. Contacts us at support@bigcontacts.com or use the 'Send Feedback' box.