Levels of access question

[v thomas]

I am assessing Business Contact Manager in the contest of SUGAR CRM and
SalesForce. I have two needs and two questions:

The two needs:

1. I want to give eight managers access to our entire sales/marketing
database so that they can view all Outlook BCM user
activities/communications/contacts/accounts/projects, etc.

2. I want to create sales/account management teams who will have access
only to their designated contacts/accounts/prospects/opportunities/etc.

The two questions:

1. Will Outlook Business Contact manager allow me to do this. I can't find
any information about it.

2. I need training two levels For management users and for sales/account
users . I can't seem to find any information on training.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Vin

 

[Lon Orenstein]

Vin:

Almost and sort of are your answers.

BCM does allow everyone to see all the data in the shared database. There's
no secure way to separate Vin's contacts from Lon's. You can change the
view to filter in/out the data but if someone learns how to un-filter it,
then they can see everything.

One way to get around this is to give each salesperson their own BCM
database, then have them export their data regularly and import it into a
"master" BCM db at headquarters. That db could then be accessed by senior
management who would be able to see all the data. This method could be done
for teams also -- each team could share one db and the team's db would
rollup into a master. However, this requires an admin person to accomplish
it and increases the likelihood of errors and duplicates.

Have you looked at MS CRM Live? This would do what you want and is
projected to be much cheaper than salesforce but not as cheap as Sugar. It
does, however, integrate much better with Outlook and other MS products.

HTH,
Lon


___________________________________________________________
Lon Orenstein
pinpointtools, llc
(e-mail address removed)
Author of Outlook 2007 Business Contact Manager For Dummies
Author of the eBook: Moving from ACT! to Business Contact Manager
www.pinpointtools.com

 

[chrishey]

To add to what Lon said:

1. If the 8 managers are co-located with the salespeople they're
monitoring, then BCM sharing feature should meet this need. If not,
you might combine sharing with a VPN solution to accomplish the same.

2. Lon is correct in that everyone has access to all prospects. Now,
there are various ways (assignments, categorization, custom fields) to
keep things separated, but I suppose your need is more for privacy,
than for organization.

In any case, please let us know about your needs.

Thanks,
Chris [msft]