Let Your Fingers Do The Roming

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday June 23, 1997

TREVOR IRETON

TREVOR IRETON reviews Australian telephone databases on CD-ROM.

WHETHER your business needs to conduct telemarketing or you want to locate a particular person, product or service, there's an alternative to stacks of White Pages filling your shelves or calling directory service.

Several companies offer Telstra's complete national phone directory on CD-ROM with updates twice a year. The programs run under Windows 3.1 and Win95.

The cheapest is the Australian National Phone Directory ($19.95 from most newsagents and computer stores). It's easy to use and good for basic searches, although the inability to print or export data is a major weakness.

For $29, the Green Pages adds extra functionality, beginning with reverse searches: entering a phone number to get a name and address. Users can also browse business classifications to find "accountants in Parramatta" or "all direct marketing agents". There's also a rudimentary contact manager with auto-dialler. Individual records can be copied to another program but only one at a time, through the Windows clipboard.

Telstra's White Pages CD ($49.95) offers useful search modifiers such as "Locality sounds like ..." and "Street starts with ..." to help narrow searches if you're doubtful about the spelling.

But if you know only the person's name, and it happens to be a common one such as Smith, the program will display only the first 60 matches in alphabetical order. Reverse searches are disabled in residential listings, but not those of business and government departments. A "personal contact directory" can store up to 1,000 records for instant recall, and it has one of the best interfaces.

No updates are offered on any of these programs: if you want the latest, you buy the latest.

Australian Phonedisc ($99.95) combines most features of the trio. It can perform reverse searches and copy single records to the Windows clipboard, as well as print detailed individual records.

The inclusion of fax numbers, an auto-dial facility and an appealing interface are extra benefits.

The variety of search options includes a "sounds like" function, wildcards and Boolean (and, or and not) commands. Phonedisc's significant shortcoming is its limited use in marketing; for instance, it cannot export multiple records to another application. That's where high-end programs come into their own.

If you've ever wondered how real estate agents, lottery ticket salespeople and other telemarketers obtained your phone number, chances are it was with Oz on Disc or Australia on Disc.

Strengths of Oz on Disc include extensive searching capabilities, label printing and the ability to save multiple items as different file formats including ASCII text, comma delimited value and fixed fields.

These can then be imported into almost any word processor, database or contact manager such as Symantec's ACT. This process involves several steps: running the search, selecting the records, saving the data in the chosen file format, then loading that file in ACT or some other program using a File-Open or File-Import option. I recommend some trial runs to give users the knack before the heavyweight exporting-importing begins.

All records in Oz on Disc are stored in geographical order, so a street search display is seen as though you were walking along that street. Duplicated records are removed to reduce mailing costs and provide accurate figures when identifying business numbers in a given category.

Separate business and residential editions of Oz On Disc are available for $259 and the pair on a single CD for $495; both prices include two half-yearly updates free.

Australia on Disc does most of this and goes one better by including a geographical mapping feature. This can be used to identify all tax agents in a postcode area or all coffee shops within a 20km radius of your workplace, for example.

This makes Australia on Disc ideal for businesses wanting to target clients. It is, perhaps, the telemarketers' dream package.

The database also includes fax numbers and the thorough search capabilities typical at this level, but some experimentation is required to discover the best search method for your needs.

Business and residential CDs sell for $350 each and are combined on a two-CD set (less convenient than the single platter of Oz on Disc) for $550. Because there's no update, you must buy a new edition as and when needed.

For all their power, both Oz on Disc and Australia on Disc still have a long way to go in terms of user-friendliness. It's great to have the contents of every White Pages phone directory packed onto a single CD-ROM, but for these very high prices the customer is entitled to a much cleaner interface and improved software design.

The level and quality of documentation is second-rate. Neither comes with a printed manual. Oz on Disc has a full book of instructions on the CD in Windows Write and Word for Windows formats and the online help is simplistic to say the least.

Australia on Disc's help screens are more informative but poorly designed, so you have to really work at getting the help you need. Both products would benefit from Wizards or tip sheets. Ironically, some of the cheaper products in this round-up proved easier to use.

I was also disappointed with the "registration" process. Having bought the software, you must phone the distributor to obtain a code to unlock the program.

Reinstall the package for any reason and you'll find the original code doesn't work: you must make another call to get a new code. The registration lines operate 9 am to 5 pm, Monday to Friday only.

Product directory

Australia on Disc and Green Pages: Dependable Database Data, (02) 9261 8555.

Australian Phonedisc and Australian National Phone Directory: Desktop Marketing Systems, (03) 9853 2500.

Oz On Disc: Read Only Memory, (02) 9564 6700.

Telstra White Pages: 1800 068 213