CircleDog: Outlook Edition Boosts Customer Management Functions, Enables Seamless Synchronization of Contacts, Tasks, and Calendar with Microsoft Outlook.

The First 'Uncomplicated' Customer Management Software Helps Small Businesses and Entrepreneurs Increase Revenue Using Their Existing Contact and Sales Data

LANCASTER, Pa. -- CircleDog, the first uncomplicated customer management software, today announced an open beta of CircleDog: Outlook Edition for Windows, software that enables small businesses to seamlessly synchronize their tasks, appointments, and contacts between CircleDog and Microsoft Outlook. CircleDog Outlook Edition helps small businesses and entrepreneurs save time and increase revenue by simplifying customer management, sales and marketing functions. CircleDog is made by Mission Research, the software company that helps companies and nonprofits increase revenues, ease operational pain, save time and money, and improve their bottom line while improving the world. The new beta is available for download at: http://www.circledog.com/beta.

Many small businesses and entrepreneurs are in the habit of managing business information ad hoc within Microsoft Office; often stretching Outlook's utility for contact management and pushing Excel beyond its scope to act as a sales tracker. However, these ad hoc approaches create data management hassles, give snapshot views of data, and create a murky understanding of customers. As a business grows, it's vital to turn this data into actionable business intelligence. CircleDog Outlook Edition allows businesses to segment prospects and customers, manage and analyze customer information and history, simplify and improve marketing to customers, and make more profitable, better-informed decisions.

Known for its crisp, clear interface, the easy-to-use software provides a single environment to track sales, easily and quickly produce and distribute targeted mailings and marketing campaigns, share information across teams, produce professional reports, and many other valuable features - all while seamlessly synchronizing with Outlook contact and schedule information.

"Millions of sole practitioners and small business owners need a way to manage their customer interactions, but find Outlook too limiting and products such as ACT! and Salesforce.com too complicated or expensive," said Charlie Crystle, CEO of Mission Research. "No longer do these entrepreneurs need to make a choice between simplicity and functionality. With our new version, every user of Microsoft Outlook can extend their Outlook data into a rich, powerful CRM tool that is as intuitive as it is powerful."

CircleDog: Outlook Edition features include:

* Automatic synchronization with Outlook contacts, tasks, and calendar

* Simple, understandable navigation

* Context-sensitive help that's always available when needed

* Complete contact and customer management tools

* Task and appointment scheduling

* Postal and email campaigns

* Centralized team information sharing 

* Sales tracking

* Sales and customer reporting

* Easy importing and exporting from Outlook, Excel, and other popular formats

CircleDog's clear, elegant, task-focused interface presents precisely what is needed - and only when and where a user needs it. Its unique hybrid design fuses the power of the desktop with the utility of the web, making it the most intuitive, simple and accessible customer management software on the market. By leveraging the forgotten power of the desktop, CircleDog also spares users from the inevitable availability issues of hosted applications while still incorporating the power of the web.

CircleDog has its origins in GiftWorks, the fastest-growing fundraising software with more than 7,000 non-profit customers. CircleDog brings GiftWorks' award-winning usability, features and functionality to the world of small business. The product quickly and easily boosts customer loyalty, increases the size and value of customer circles, and rapidly improves any business' bottom line.

A fully functional fifteen-day trial is available at www.CircleDog.com. CircleDog Outlook Edition runs on Windows XP or Vista and is available immediately. The product's up-front, per-user price is $99 - and unlike most CRM software providers, there are never any monthly fees. Retailers can order copies for resale from distributors Ingram Micro, Navarre, and Tech Data.

About Mission Research

Mission Research is the company that created GiftWorks, a leading fundraising software suite for non-profits. The company's roots are in simple but powerful software products that help organizations save time and money, ease operational pain, and quickly improve the bottom line. It was the idea that these philosophies could be applied to the for-profit world that gave birth to CircleDog. By empowering small business owners to manage, analyze, and act on their relationships with clarity and precision, CircleDog eases business pain, saves time and money, turns contacts into customers and customers into loyalists. Mission Research is committed to responsible, sustainable behavior at every turn. Our corporate philanthropy and low-impact packaging are just a couple of examples of how we strive to make the world a better place.

Outlook, Excel, and Office are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation; ACT! is a registered trademark of Sage Software; Salesforce.com is a registered trademark of Salesforce.com, Inc.