I have been a user of the ACT Sales Manager Software. Will the MS Business Contact Manager software be able to do similar things, ie, track inquiries, values, purchase orders, status of orders, customize reports, as well as contact management?
If not, will Pinpoint tools offer solutions for Sales Rep organizations utilizing MS BCM, and Outlook 2007?
Thank you,
Billy V. Smith

Thanks for using our Sales Manager software, Billy!  We're working on a transition path for all of you to move into Microsoft CRM Online.

We tried to do this with Business Contact Manager and it will work fine for tracking contacts that are linked to accounts, and it has a good sales opportunity function but there are places where it just runs out of steam.  For example, generating a quote involves Office Accounting and it's not very robust.  Reporting is also weak in BCM.  Finally, there's not a way to add other database tables to track orders or invoices and we kept hearing from users that they want to reconcile their commissions too.

So, Microsoft CRM Online is a hosted service from Microsoft that WILL do all of that, and more.  It integrates with Outlook so Outlook becomes your "cockpit" and you just work through that program for everything in your business. 

A question for you:  what percentage of your manufacturer's or principals give you a spreadsheet each month with your commission statement so you have a record of all the orders and invoices that were shipped?  Would you like to import those into CRM and see a complete history of those per customer? We think we can do that pretty easily but some manufacturers are still only giving the reps paper...

Feel free to call me and we can discuss your needs. 

Thanks,
Lon