Database advice

[Mendip Ironing]

Hi all

Could anyone recommend a free (or cheap ) database program that I can use.

I would like to enter my customers details in to it and then perhaps do a print out, monthly, so that I can target my best customers and also print out a detailed breakdown of their account, if they request it.

Nothing too flashy as I can be incompetent at the best of times without adding techy stuff in the mix

[roy]

If you use MS OutLook (not OutLook Express) there is a great deal you can do with the Contacts side. It will provide a basic Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool to get you started. It also has the bonus of creating new contacts, simply, as soon as you receive an email from them.
There are freebies out there, some are addons to OutLook, but start simple and move on when you know what you really want.

[Mendip Ironing]

Hi Roy

Thanks for the advice. I don't currently have Outlook but perhaps I should look into getting it.

[tkessex]

If you need to keep customer records and produce a 'report' of their account (so presumably you need to record transactional data also), you're better developing an application in Microsoft Access. It is a piece of software which scares many a person, but once you get used to it it's actually brilliant to use.

You can, in all honesty, set it up to do almost anything. and keeping customer records, querying those records and producing tailored reports is made incredibly simple. You can find some free applications strewn across the internet, but if you'd like a little more help don't hesitate to PM me - I may be able to offer a run-down version of something I have created previously, or guide you through tackling the problem yourself.

[roy]

Access is good but I have my reasons for suggesting Outlook from a customer relationship management (CRM) perspective.
Looking further ahead it is likely that the requirement will develop into real CRM - the basis of every successful business. This will mean that all interaction with the prospect/client will need to be colated in order that the complete picture can be seen. So things like sending emails out, and coming in too, telephone conversations and documentation all want to be easily at hand from one central contact record.
There are numerous 'off the self' software packages that do this superbly well, written and developed by people who really understand CRM and sales management, at a sensible price so why reinvent the wheel?
Why do I recommend Outlook as a starter? Simply because you can use that to do many of the basic CRM tasks easily and when the time comes to move on and up most real CRM packages will import from, or integrate with, Outlook saving loads and time and reducing wasted effort.
I'm not anti Access, I just think that it has it place - crunching large databases of records for analysis purposes. I have yet to see a really good implementation that deals with CRM effectively that hasn't had huge amounts of costly development time and considerable input from a Sales and CRM expert.
Use Outlook for now. Turn on the Journal function and learn how to use it properly and you'll be well on the way.

[Mendip Ironing]

Thank you for all the replies....It is definitely gratefully received.

So Roy, now pretending that I am thick how do I get outlook to work on my pc? At the moment I just use Yahoo for private emails, but I want to set up an account for my business (email). I don't have a website and don't plan on having one for the time being as I need to just concentrate on getting customers and to be honest I doubt my customers would care what a website looks like!

So, how do I get outlook to run? Currently I am running Vista.

Also, further to what tkessex was saying about Access, I will need to produce a report that will break down a customers usuage for a month, in relation to a referral scheme, so I will need to be able to produce that kind of report.

[roy]

You need a POP3 email. It could be that your current one is already, if not then buy your own domain and email from someone like:
Easily.co.uk
Web-mania.com
Fasthosts
It's dead cheap and you will have a better email address that has more credibility than **@yahoo.com or hotmail.com.
This new address will be POP3 and that's what you need to set up Outlook to go and fetch your mail and then create new contact records automatically for you based on the mail address received.
If you havn't got Outlook, it is part of the MS Office suite (Word, Excel etc) and can be bought S/H on ebay at sensible prices. I'm pretty sure you don't need the current version with Vista, Office 2000/2003/XP will do - someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
You will need to learn Outlook just like any other software, but it's fairly intuitive and there's loads of learning resources available as books or on the net.

[tkessex]

When you create an email account in Outlook you need to know three sets of information:

- Your login details
- POP3 server address
- SMTP server address

Your login details will be those you use to access your email account.

The POP3 server address allows you to access incoming email and will be particular to the company holding your email account.

The SMTP server allows you to send email using Outlook and, no matter who your email account is with, will always be associated with your Internet Service Provider (ISP). So if your internet is provided by Orange for example, the SMTP address would be smtp.orangehome.co.uk.

However, should you have an email account with either Hotmail or MSN, Outlook has a specific option to set up the account. There is also an 'Other' option for additional popular internet-based providers, but I have never explored this.

[jim_gold]

Have to add something here: at least take a look at Filemaker Pro.

It comes with loads of common templates plus you can set up any manner of database easier than anything else I have ever used.

We started simple, now it runs our email marketing, accounts, prospect lists etc etc

Not free though, but you can pick up versions 6, 7 and 8 (now up to 9) on ebay for a few pounds.

Access , ohmygod, what a nightmare, don't go near it.

[Peter Bowen]

I'll agree about filemaker - far more fun that access but... if we're at step by step level on setting up an email account learning filemaker might consume a vast amount of time.

Bad luck - the short answer is there is no free lunch - you're going to have to spend a few bucks or a few hours - generally it's cheapest to spend the money.

SugarCRM is a very powerful customer relationship managment system and it's scalable meaning that you won't have to learn some new system and move all your information as you grow.

It's free too but then you have to host it on your own computer - set up apache and mysql - not too difficult but again it might take you many hours if you don't know what you're doing

But- there are several people who offer low cost hosted sugarcrm packages - you pay per month and access it via the internet. Try out a couple and make sure that you can get a decent response time from their server from where you are (I've seen it vary from <1second to >8 seconds) or it gets frustrating.

Cheers

Pete