This week I spent some time maintaining my contacts in CRM and Windows Live Mail (Hotmail). BTW have you noticed that our 'live' products change names more often than Prince in the early 90's.

My experience in CRM was the clear winner. I was able to scan in all my new business cards with my excellent CardScan device and then I merged & updated my records appropriately. With work contacts I typically start them off as Leads (since 80% of 'card collection interactions' go nowhere). At least if they are lead in the CRM the data is backed up and my colleagues can be aware of the interaction (as opposed to a pile of cards gathering dust). If there is a simple 'one off' action required I create an Activity associated to the Lead. If a set of long running interactions is predicted I'll convert the Lead to a Contact and create/update the parent Account as appropriate.

My experience in Windows Live Mail was far from productive. Half the time copy/paste doesn't work. I can't merge Contacts. I'm a reasonably serious user of Live Mail and Live Messenger (through my @philiprichardson.org account) - so keeping my contacts well organized is worthwhile. However the integration between Windows Live Mail contacts and Messenger can only be described as byzantine. Fortunately this stuff is in beta so much of this will be ironed out in the near future.

I'd love to see LinkedIn offer some web services. Here is my dream scenario:
1) Collect business card.
2) Scan business card with CardScan.
3) Upload into CRM as a Lead.
4) Convert Lead to a Contact. At this point I can also choose to add the person to my Windows Live Mail and/or LinkedIn.

When people leave an organization you don't want them to 'take the whole database with them'. However it's naive to think that people don't grow personal networks while they are at work. By combining the growth of the personal network and work contact base into the same set of actions then people may feel less of a 'right' to take the database when the leave. They will already have all the contacts they are feel they are entitled to.

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

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