Microsoft adds Outlook Customer Manager to Office 365 SMB plan
Microsoft is adding another new service to its Office 365 Business Premium plan called Outlook Customer Manager.
Microsoft officials described the service as a tool for managing customer relationships from inside Outlook.The tool will be available for no extra cost in the Office 365 Business Premium Plan, officials announced on November 14.
Outlook Customer Manager automatically organizes customer information like emails, meetings, tasks, deals and deadlines in a timeline next to users' inboxes.
Microsoft has been beefing up its highest end small and mid-size business (SMB) plan, Office 365 Business Premium, with a number of new services lately.
Last month, Microsoft posted and then pulled a sign-up page for "business apps for Office" that touted a handful of mobile-first, cross-platform apps, including MileIQ, Bookings, Invoice, Spend, Point, and Presence that apparently will be part of the Office 365 Business Premium plan.
Some of the applications either already have been or are in the midst of being added to the Office 365 Business Premium plan, such as the MileIQ mileage tracker and Bookings automatic scheduling applications. Just this week, Microsoft announced that Bookings could be integrated directly with business users' Facebook pages.) Microsoft bought Mobile Data Labs, the company behind the MileIQ app, in November 2015.
Office 365 Business Premium is Microsoft's most comprehensive Office 365 subscription plan for small businesses. It costs $15 per user per month if paid monthly, or $12.50 per user per month if paid annually. It includes the full set of locally-installable Office applications for up to five PCs and/or Macs per user, as well as Exchange Online, Skype for Business Online, SharePoint Online, Yammer enterprise social-networking, and 1 TB of OneDrive for Business cloud storage.
Microsoft officials said that Microsoft also is planning to bring Outlook Customer Manager to Office 365 E3 and E5 plans "in the future." The feature will begin rolling out to Business Premium subscribers, starting with those in First Release, "in the coming months."