ContactEase -- The Unknown Contact Relationship Manager

Every once and a while, somebody asks me about Goldmine or Act! or other Contact Relationship Management programs. The king of the hill in larger installations is Salesforce.  But I use (and have used for close to 15 years) a program called ContactEase from ColeValley.

This has evolved from a relatively simple program to a full-featured contact manager. It features an overlay with Outlook, so that the program is transparent to the average user: data entered in Outlook is also entered into ContactEase, where it can be further massaged and used by a marketing department.

For smaller firms, the program can be extensively and easily customized to meet their needs. The use of Categories lets you track groups of contacts for newsletters, marketing or other purposes (and of course contacts can be assigned to multiple categories). A HotKey link to any other Windows program lets you insert addresses, email addresses, etc. wherever you want, be it Word, Outlook, WordPerfect, OpenOffice or whatever. These can be inserted in formats controlled by you. It also lets you design and print labels or envelopes easily.

For law firms, it lets you insert a client/matter table that is linked to specific contacts. A “relations” tab lets you control the “three degrees of separation.” Thus for example if I am doing work for a firm which is also using, say, an IT contractor, accountant or other outside consultants, I can set up links so that when I open the “relations” tab for a given contact, their various outside consultants are displayed (as well as the date the link was updated and by whom). If I open up a consultant, I can see that he is linked to multiple firms.

Activity and Assignment tabs also let you control projects and provide a tickler system to keep track of them.

So why is this program not used more widely?  A firm that is using a practice management program such as Time Matters, Amicus or PracticeMaster, is understandably reluctant to implement a specific Contact Manager which overlaps the functionality of the practice management program. Therefore ContactEase has been used more by marketing departments in larger firms.

But when people ask me whether I use Time Matters or Amicus to track my practice, I reply: “Neither. I use PCLaw for time and billing, Worldox for document management, and ContactEase for client relations.” Take a look.

Comments

[name]

thanks for your review helpful.

[contractor accountant]

Thanks John. Interesting post, it's often so daunting.

[records management]

Thanks for posting this article as I know it saves organization time by making it easy to gain and maintain a understanding of the organizations.ContactEase keeps track of of the clients and relationship with them. It is easy to use and flexible and designed to confirm consistent and accurate data entry.