Blackberry Curve 8330
Effectively managing communication, email, and social networking have become crucial to staying organized and productive. It is especially hard to keep your productivity up when your office is in your car, an airport terminal, or a coffeeshop. I don’t know how I would be able to manage today, without a smartphone and instant access to appointments, contacts, documents, email, instant messaging, and the Internet.
I have been a loyal Palm user since the days of the Palm Pilot. After observing my husband’s increased productivity, as well as that of several of my business colleagues, I finally gave up my Palm Treo and plunged into the world of Blackberry. For me, this did not just mean learning how to use a new smartphone. It also meant that I would have to make friends with Microsoft Outlook.
I love the simplicity of Palm Desktop, and I have never found the few additional features in Outlook to be worth the frustration of using it. I really WANT to like Outlook, so I have decided to trust my friends who have reassured me that Microsoft has improved Outlook.
As a small business owner, I have actually always had a need for a more robust contact management system than Outlook or Palm Desktop. I have tried many CRM systems including ACT!, Goldmine, and EccoPro. EccoPro was my all-time favorite, but the company just could not compete with the software giants like Microsoft. ACT! served me well until it was sold to Sage Software and completely re-vamped, causing me plenty of headaches.
Being away from my office requires that my system will synchronize with my PDA. None of the CRM systems synchronized smoothly, so I eventully came full circle and converted back to the Palm Desktop, where I have remained until recently.
What finally nudged me to make the decision to convert to the Blackberry/MS Outlook combo was the discovery that I can synchronize Outlook with Salesforce and enjoy the benefits of a true customer relationship management system. So that’s where I am headed. Let’s hope it is worth the learning curve.