These embedded small business CRM software applications add value to Outlook in many ways. The primary benefits you can look forward to are:

Enhanced sales, service and marketing functionality to MS Outlook.
Improved email functionality.
You can share your Outlook AddressBook/s across the network.
You can share your Outlook AddressBook/s without needing MS Exchange Server.
Shared Outlook tasksShared Microsoft Outlook calendarsImproved record features and management.
No integration and synchronization with another CRM system.
Industrial strength database for better performance.
Much easier approval and adoption than other CRM systems.
Considerable cost savings with product, training and service.
Having an MS Outlook CRM solution also means no synchronization process required, no external database hassles, and no problems when you work offline. Every contact you make, every activity you perform, every task you assign is automatically available in Outlook. This is because Outlook CRM applications work fully within Outlook, storing your customer information in the Outlook Contact, Task, Appointment and Journal entries you use every day.

The advantages of Outlook based CRM software are numerous.

You stay in the same application all day. No toggling backwards and forwards means a more pleasurable and productive user experience. Bottom line – your investment is paying its way, not gathering dust on the shelf.
You get going quicker with much less training. Being extensions of Outlook, you are immediately familiar with the interface that you already know. This equates to considerable savings, as the hidden costs associated with training and support are minimized.
You can capture customer e-mails with a single click and with this capability you and your sales professionals can associate correspondence to the appropriate contact, account or opportunity for sales activity tracking.
You have negligible installation costs – just download and go.
What’s important about this breed of CRM products is that they have been developed from the ground up for Microsoft Outlook, predominantly on Microsoft’s .NET platform, which enables the product to be more email and internet centric.

Many CRM products pre-date the internet and even the advent of email, so it stands to reason that these products aren’t always geared to take full advantage of the new electronic medium of communication with clients, staff, everyone. The newer products also benefit from vastly improved development platforms now available to software developers.

They also haven’t started to get afflicted by the notoriously contagious ‘bloatware’ malaise that often affects ageing software – adding features for the sake of it. Instead of rather trimming off unwanted features, speeding up performance and getting rid of bugs, some CRM products are more like mutton dressed as lamb – full of superfluous features the developers have decided you need.

CRM’s that rely on MS Exchange Server to provide network functionality have, for the most part, been excluded here. MS Exchange is a rather expensive, support-intensive beast and is overkill for most small businesses. Most software recommended here works with MS Exchange Server as well, though.

Looking at the problems some Contact Managers and CRM systems experience integrating to MS Outlook, it ppears Outlook has a preference for products that are ’embedded’ inside it, as opposed to ‘integrated’ to it. Virtually all CRM products ideally need to ‘talk’ to Outlook though, unless they are targeting Apple Mac’s, or a market on another planet.