Interview Four Lesson Summary

Well, as Kathy said her approach really does work for her and it might or might not work for your office. One of the key things you need to research more is about PIM options that your CIO office can/does support. Once you have that information then you can continue on and determine if this is really an option for you. Even if they don't support some type of PIM implementation then you still might be able to go and fight for it, but it'll be more of a battle if you are explaining why you need a PIM solution for your office.

Also, you want a PIM solution that allows some type of sharing of information. Now Kathy really did comment well on the ability of being able to print the information in multiple ways. This could constitute a way to exchange information. Yes, it would mean that everyone in your office would have a binder or folder where they kept all of the printed sets of information from everyone else. Now it does mean that you might be able to work out some type of who controls what information for what customer in this approach.

Another positive thing can be the comments about out of the box with no additional programming the Address Book has at least 35 different fields and bits of information that can be entered in about a person. As she says this does give you some of the information structure and control that you haven't seen in any of the first three interviews. It is also possible that you might be able to expand from the canned list of fields that comes with Outlook: Kathy's PIM option of choice.

The above section covers some of the key lessons noted after the interview with Kathy. If you have any insights in this approach or any other thoughts that you feel would enhance the lessons above remember that the built-in comments system is there for you.
Before we go to the next page take out a piece of paper and your favorite writing instrument (you should be seeing a pattern here) and see how many pros and cons that you can come up with regarding this approach.

When you have listed your pros and cons continue to our pros and cons list.