Once upon a time, businesses relied on paper address books. Those clunky things contained the information of every business contact, arranged according to names or department, or by another characteristic. Now, though, technology has transformed the concept and made it possible to organize customer information in myriad ways.

Paper-based address books used to be vital to a business.

Now, there is software that is dedicated solely to contact management. One query on a search engine will yield hundreds to thousands of results. However, services like email also have contact management features.

What is contact management?

In a nutshell, this is the administration of contacts and their details to ensure that they are organized and up-to-date. The best contact management software can help do that.

It assists users in finding client or colleague information in seconds as well. Because of this, there is no delay in providing customers with the information they need or in winning them over.

Furthermore, because most contact management applications are now cloud-based, they are accessible from anywhere and on any platform. This is advantageous for administrators who have to send emails in bulk to select groups of colleagues at any time. This also reduces the stress of on-the-go employees who need access to clients’ contact details.

Contact management and email

Nowadays, email address books contain only the information of individuals or businesses that you have previously sent an email to or from whom you have received an electronic communication. This means that it is not possible for employees to send emails to people whose addresses they do not know beforehand, which could impede business processes.

A centrally stored and managed address list can change that. Since it contains information pertaining to vital contacts, employees who need them can access and utilize them instantly. As such, they can proceed with their tasks without further ado.

This is mostly available on the desktop, which makes it challenging for companies to deploy this crucial tool to smartphones. Even when they do, the process is a manual one.

To save time, automation is needed. To that end, here are five tips that can help you synchronize your contacts list with mobile phones and automate the procedure to boot.

1. Invest in a sync solution

Microsoft Office 365 has a feature called the Global Address List (GAL). This exists on the Exchange server, and it stores the contact information of executives, employees, partners, customers, and other stakeholders. This is an important tool for businesses because it centralizes email addresses and distribution lists.

Despite that, there is one crucial function that it lacks: synchronization with business smartphones . Without a means of syncing the GAL, companies have to implement manual workarounds and spend plenty of time and money in doing so. This often results in productivity and revenue losses.

Some organizations utilize custom apps to remedy this. Unfortunately, this method is not scalable and has few functions.

That is why to completely resolve the issue and to synchronize contacts better, your business needs an Office 365 GAL sync solution.

What is a GAL sync solution? It is a piece of contact software you can utilize to automate the synchronization of contacts as well as notes and calendars to smartphones you provide to employees. Since the process is automatic, there is no need to tinker with the settings every time new contacts are added or when any bit of information is modified.

On top of that, whenever you deploy new devices, the updated company GAL is present in it.

2. Centralized administration

A centralized administration system, in any setting, is an effective approach to managing tasks. In the context of contacts synchronization, this ensures that every company phone receives GAL updates as soon as they happen.

Contacts synchronization platforms enable that through SSO and fine-grained control over settings. The latter is beneficial as it allows administrators to distribute sensitive contacts and information only to individuals with proper clearance.

More than that, it accelerates the delivery of the GAL to new company smartphones. As mentioned previously, there is no manual task to do to synchronize the GAL in new devices or devices that have just been reformatted.

Additionally, the synchronization is not limited to a handful of contacts only. With a contact management software, it is possible to distribute and sync unlimited information to every company-owned smartphone. On top of that, updates do not have to happen only periodically. If needed, you can distribute them several times a day. This also leverages how you choose the best CRM system for your business to improve customer interaction and customer data management.

3. Create distribution groups

A distribution group is a list of individuals who will receive an email in one go. The email client considers them as a single recipient so there is no need to add people’s addresses one at a time every time.

Creating distribution lists in GAL helps save time in sending emails, especially if it is the same set of persons.

But how does it help in synchronizing contacts to smartphones?

When you have distribution groups, you can target them for updates with ease. This means that you can change those only when modifications have been made to any number of contacts. Thus, there is no need to synchronize contacts from the ground up to ensure that lists are updated. This process is also automatic so there is no need to do anything more than the edits you need.

4. Filter legacy data

Though there is little configuration to do with an address book software, there are settings that you can tinker with to streamline the synchronization of lists. For example, you can sort and filter legacy data.

In a GAL, there could be contacts that are no longer relevant. By using the sort and filter function, you can remove those contacts from the synchronization process that happens automatically. This can help in the process because it focuses the application’s effort on selected contacts only.

Additionally, filtering unwanted information can help business smartphone users save on storage space.

5. Update contacts incrementally

Once again, one thing that can help you with your contacts synchronization is by making changes to your software’s settings. While this can be tedious at first, doing so can smooth the automatic synchronization of contacts at a later time. On top of that, this can help save money because it can curb data charges.

What do you need to do to enjoy those benefits? Configure updates to roll out incrementally. Or sync only changed information. This way, smartphone users get the data they need as soon as they become available.

Moreover, this setting abstracts the possibility of sync errors. These can occur when wide swathes of updates roll out as there could be information missed or edited data unfixed.

Secure contacts synchronization

Security is always a concern when it comes to communications. It can also arise especially when a Global Address List is accessible to every person who has a business email account. However, you can put your concerns to rest because sync solutions have filtering features that make synchronization selective. Apart from that, you can utilize distribution groups in making sure that only a handful of individuals receive certain contact information and updates. Most of all, administrators have full control over all users from a dashboard. There are multiple tools for that, which can make the management of thousands of smartphones and users seamless.