Busineess Content Management ...I have to what???

The only way for a company to use any Content Management Tool is based on one rule...Garbage In Garbage Out There are two places you can be in Business Content Management, either you are in an Account Record or you are in a Contact Record that is LINKED to the account. So the first thing do is to make sure the new data is not already in the Database, you do a lookup for the Company Name. If the coast is clear, well, run with it and create the Account Record FIRST. The reasoning for this is every contact that is entered in the database is linked to the correct Account record, so that you can build a company profile of the organizational structure of the company. Let's get back to Garbage in Garbage out. This is a pet peeve, because all it does is make life difficult in the end run. A little time up front to make sure the address, phone numbers, web sites on account records and emails on contact records are all entered otherwise the first time you have someone on the phone screaming for an address or a phone number that is wrong..it is a pain. You will never forget a sales person.. walking down a NYC street in January, late for a meeting and not very happy..and you are scrambling everywhere for the info...I have been doing this a long time and it is easier to make sure it is done right the first time than to have this happen. Sometimes the Corporate address is not the same as the contact. The billing address for the project should be put on the contact's record and not the account record. There is a madness to this....as we start to do business with larger companies, you will have more than one project going on...with a second or third LOB...a very cool concept selling horizontally into an Account.. It is how to keep track of several projects and the paperwork they generate, like contracts, emails, discussion notes and keep some of your sanity. This brings me back to a little used, but learned the hard way, the One Button that post the date and time of the discussions, emails, contracts and other notes that are to be documented. It will let you know who touched what last and what was done. So that the Accounts Receivable Group knows who to call to follow up on the late payments and has a running dated history of the communication touch points if they are ever disputed....cool CYA!!! The difference between the Database tools, the CRM based tools, the web based tools or the enterprise management tools, like SAP is cost and the rate at which they fail. This has to be done as part of the job and from the top down or the failure rate for something as big and as expensive as SAP is up in 80 to 90%. That is what Tom's C.I.O was talking to about Money and IT projects....see blog! I was once told by an old time sales man that you can be more attractive, smarter, or a load of other things but a good salesman is only as good as their database. Next week what is a CRM???