Effectively managing contacts is one of the most mission-critical tasks of running a business. Sales and marketing need the ability to quickly find the current status of an active opportunity in their database, while support teams should be able to quickly find a contact’s entire customer history.

This buyer’s guide will provide a brief overview of contact management software, which is designed for these purposes (among others). Here’s what we’ll cover:

What Is Contact Management Software?

Common Features of Contact Management Software

Contact Management vs CRM: What's the Difference?

Market Trends

What Is Contact Management Software?

At its core, contact management programs store customer contact information. This can include customers’ names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and even social media profile information. These databases are often easily searchable and store important documents within each contact profile.

Screenshot of Base user dashboard

These systems are designed to increase efficiency by consolidating critical customer data into one tool. Rather than trapping contact information in your team’s individual inboxes or address books, everyone maintains a single view of the customer.

Common Features of Contact Management Software

In addition to the core capabilities described in the previous section, contact tracking systems might also include the following features.

Contact Management vs CRM: What's the Difference?

Contact tracking software is essentially a more basic version of a customer relationship management (CRM) system, although vendors sometimes use these terms interchangeably, particularly when discussing CRM systems designed for small businesses.

Typically, CRM systems include the most common contact management features described in the previous section; however, they might also incorporate more robust workflow automation, reporting and interaction tracking, among other features. Depending on the CRM application, the system might also offer features for marketing automation, sales force automation, customer service, field service and help desk and call center management. For more information on CRM software, visit our buyer’s guide.

Despite many vendors differentiating their systems in this way, you might still encounter systems that have more features than another product described as being a CRM system, and vice versa. Regardless of what the system is called, deciding between a basic contact management system or a more robust CRM system could depend on a variety of factors.

Most of the buyers we speak with are smaller businesses, or smaller departments within larger businesses, which don't require capabilities beyond tracking contact information. These buyers most often can function exclusively with the core capabilities described in the “common features” section.

Meanwhile, CRM software buyers need more capabilities that extend well beyond simple contact management. They may need features specific to their industry (e.g., field service) or for a particular operational role, such as customer service. Very large enterprises might also need contact managing features to work in concert with other types of automation, so they would buy an integrated CRM suite.

Market Trends

The world of business software has offered contact management solutions for many years, probably longer than most other types of business software. But just because contact management apps have existed for many years, that doesn’t mean the products and their functionalities aren’t still evolving. Vendors of contact management software continue to refine their products in light of the changes brought by increasingly digital business environments. Modern contact management systems are often designed to be:

• Always omnichannel. Omnichannel software allows companies to seamlessly engage with customers and clients across all common communication channels, from personal and business email addresses, to phone calls, live chat conversations and more. Omnichannel contact management systems ensure that information regarding preferred communication channels, and contact details, are stored with every contact’s entry.

• Increasingly integrated. Contact management software is often combined (integrated) with other CRM functionalities into broader software suites. Integrated suites add efficiency to internal workflow processes by minimizing the number of interfaces employees use to complete individual tasks. While in years past contact management systems were often sold as standalone products, today, they’re more often found combined with other applications, like those used specifically for sales, service or marketing.

• Interdepartmentally available. As more and more businesses find value in increasing the cooperation between their internal departments, more software vendors are designing platforms to facilitate cross-departmental information sharing. Contact managment solutions that allow all internal departments to share and work from the same database are increasingly common.