For the people that were still stuck on Outlook 2013 because of lack of support for BCM in Outlook 2016, the wait is finally over; Microsoft has released Outlook Customer Manager (or OCM for short).
More than just the acronym has changed as OCM has been build from the ground up or actually; From the Cloud up (or would it be down then?).
With OCM you can centrally manage various data on your customers and deals that you have made with them. It also conveniently shows a timeline of past interactions you had with them like emails, appointments and calls.
Although the current feature set is a bit smaller than the original BCM, it also has some massive benefits over BCM. Most prominent are the extremely simple setup (it no longer relies on a local SQL installation) and that it can be accessed from anywhere and by multiple people as the data is stored in special (group) mailboxes in Office 365. New features will be added over time and can also be requested via UserVoice.
OCM is currently rolling out to Office 365 Business Premium subscriptions at no additional cost and it will soon be made available to E3 and E5 subscriptions as well. When it has been made available to you, the Customer Manager button will automatically show up in Outlook and is directly ready to use.
There is also an app for iOS so you can access the data on an iPhone or iPad. Apps for Android and Windows Mobile are also being developed and will be made available as soon as they are ready.
View: Introducing Outlook Customer Manager—relationships made easy for small businesses
