I had an interesting conversation today with a potential client in Minnesota and I was reminded yet again of the potential for confusion, even about such a basic concept as a contact database.

•    We have a contact system in our people application
•    We have of course complex contacts – territory and permission based, in our Sales Manager software

But interestingly to meet this requirement – to store contact data per permissioned group of users, allow them to input new data, search, filter and review their own contact data – and allow head office to review all contact data – the simple solution was to use InfoCapture – the main application in Process Manager  – our form based workflow solution.

Contacts

This is on the one hand surprising – why isn’t such a simple requirement best delivered by one of our main applications? But then when you stop thinking about forms, and think of the data in the form – you realize the power of Process Manager to provide exactly what a simple requirement like this needs.

It is a mental leap though – it is hard enough for our own staff to think about what Process Manager can do within an intranet environment – imagine how hard it is for a potential customer who has never used any of our applications, and is still trying to develop an understanding of what they need.

When they are looking for a contact management system they would look to our applications that contain contact management – which in this case was the wrong place to look.

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