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real estate software / uk database design | property management software
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Property Database Software
Contact Management Software Packages
A contact management database is just that: a
software package written to let you record information about your
contacts and how you contacted/will be contacting them.
There are many packages available from simple
and cheap 'shareware' offers, through to more sophisticated commercial
packages and very expensive sales & marketing solutions. Some
are oriented towards specific markets (such as sales, lettings or
management) while others are more generic to general contact management.
Some of the benefits of a contact management system are:
- Cost: You
can buy contact management software for hundreds of pounds (or
less - or more!) as opposed to the generally more expensive property
packages. You also won't have to pay annual support costs (you
might even get 'pay as you go' support) and training is likely
to be far less (or even not "needed")
- Pre-defined fields
and functions: All contact management software should come
with many useful pre-defined fields such as name, address, telephone
numbers, note fields, contact dates and so on. These can be very
useful for many Estate Agents. Many will also come with some simple
pre-defined reports and functions
- User defined fields:
Many of these packages also let you add your own fields which
might possibly be used for your more property-oriented data.
- Ease of use:
They can be simple to use, either because they don't need to offer
much and/or because their fundamental functionality is straight
forward and they are written for a wide number of applications.
Not always true of course.
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Sales, lettings and commercial applicants
and landlords contact information and detailed property requirements
can be stored and accessed from one central location.
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- Good start-up solutions:
They can be good for a start-up agency which may want to move
on to more specialist property software later on. If this is the
case, then it is immensely useful if the contact software can
'export' all its data out of its database so you can transfer
it into any new package at a later date.
- Large numbers of
users: Many contact management software packages have thousands
of users, which should mean stability (the bugs too often associated
with property software packages are not so common in contact software),
more development and possibly a user-group voice.
Some of the downsides include:
- Not written for
Estate Agents: An obvious remark but an important one.
If you buy a contact management package then it is not likely
to be written for or oriented to the type of work which property
companies require (e.g. valuations, )
- Not so good for
high transactions: If you have a large number of records
and properties then contact management software may be less suitable
with the lack of mass processing functionality.
- Little analysis/database
segmentation: The cheaper contact software may not offer
much analysis as you would want to have . Can a package analyse/segment
by any field?
- Maintenance:
You will probably have to pay to upgrade to any new versions.
- Support:
Support is unlikely to be property-aware and the quality is harder
to assess.
- Training:
For some packages, training might not even be offered.
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