Outlook® 2007 Business Contact Manager For Dummies®

Chapter 11. Sharing Your Data

In This Chapter

• Being the king or queen of your BCM database

• Sharing the family jewels with the team

• Creating the master database

• Linking to the mothership

• Disconnecting users from the database

Why would you want to share your BCM data? Easy answer — so everyone can be on the same page with the same customers, prospects, sales opportunities, projects, and marketing campaigns. BCM gives your business the ability to see what everyone is doing and who is doing what to whom! When Mary, your best salesperson, has a conversation with your biggest customer and writes a phone log about the call, you can see it in BCM as soon as she saves it. If she's on the road and writes it on her laptop, you can see it as soon as she synchronizes with the master database. You'll see the date she entered it, what she entered, and that Mary is the user who entered it. Now you're starting to track all the touch points, and everyone can share. The next time that best customer calls in and asks a question, anyone in the office can be just as smart as Mary in answering it — just by looking in the communications history for the customer.

Note

We assume you have co-workers with whom you want to share your BCM database. If you work by yourself and don't want anyone else to enter or change data, don't read this chapter — it's not for you!

Understanding How BCM Shares Data

It's good to be the king or queen! In this case, it's good to be the owner of the BCM database because you have all the ...