Personal Network/Contacts manager app - any ideas

[simongr]

Hi all

Just mulling on something that has been on my mind for a while now and I have not been able to find a neat solution to a challenge I am having. In my current (and soon to be ex) role as [insert role] I work across a multinational corporation with a primary focus on the local geography. As I sit outside the business I don't have a narrow set of contacts that I work with - in fact I have to interact with at a minimum the senior leadership team, their direct reports (approx 50 people) and many of their direct reports - replicate that then across multiple geographies and trying to keep track of who I have interacted with, when that was and what was discussed and any actions arising is a little bit time consuming.

I am just about to leave my current role and any future role likely to have the same challenge - and in fact going into the role will require me to build that network pretty quickly.

So I was wondering if any of you out there who have similar challenges for your personal/business contacts/network use an app/possibly a website to manage this. I of course use LinkedIn but that doesn't enable me to track some of the information I need and my LinkedIn network is not my day to day operational network.

I guess what I am looking for is an app that does the following:

- Records contact details (perhaps drawing them from my contacts)
- Shows links/reporting lines between contacts
- Tracks date of contacts
- Attaches comments/notes to the last contact
- Captures actions arising/timing
- Allows me to share that information

Anyone have/use something similar?

If there are any app developers out there who want to steal this idea and develop their own to o this - please feel free to do so

Cheers

S

 

[harvyk]

Sounds like you are after a CRM application. There are many out there already commercially available, including personal ones which would allow you to keep track of your network and yet not tie you to any actual corporate network.


I'm also pretty sure you'd be able to find such things for iPhones / iPads / Android / Windows Mobile as well as installable applications for laptops without too much trouble.

 

[simongr]

Yeah - last time I looked I couldn't see much available. I hadn't thought of it as a variety of CRM - that might put a spin on things. I just found one that had some of the functions (Contacts Journal) but not the links between contacts. Thanks for the insight!

 

[harvyk]

No worries, building CRM application is one of the core things I do, so when you said your requirements it sounded like a personal version of most of the databases I've built in the last few years.

 

[simongr]

Looks like Contacts Journal is closest - just doesn't have the functionality that I can see to show links between contacts

 

[Homer]

You could take a look at Capsule CRM. It's free for up to 2 users and 250 contacts. It's a web app with an iPhone app. Plenty of integrations in the paid version if you need them down the track.

 

[Bundy Bear]

I thought that is what linkedin tries to do, but I guess you can't add your own notes, but it tells me the links between people, I do have the app for that but I don't know who really finds benefit from it.

 

[Daver6]

This really doesn't address most your needs, but may go some way to keeping notes. Rapportive (Rapportive) is a gmail plugin which pulls information from various social media sites about your contacts. You can also add notes etc. It is 100% free. It was actually acquired by LindedIn a year or so ago.

Obviously if you don't use gmail (or a Google Apps account) then it isn't going to be of much use