None-Personal Email / Password Sharing

dave-lew99 · 11 May 2010 at 16:21

Quite a few of the companies we deal with, we deal with online - usually only allowing one user per account.

Since we're a small company we don't want to tie a physical staff member to an external account - in case we need to access correspondance/place orders etc.

However, password sharing feels very wrong, as does non-personal emails - managed through either distributions lists or shared mailboxes.

How do people solve this (seemingly) common problem?

brainchylde · 11 May 2010 at 17:11

Use some sort of CRM system to keep track of your correspondence/orders etc?

dave-lew99 · 11 May 2010 at 17:29

We've been evaluating a few recently, but what if you need to log into a website for information or to place an order?

bigredshark · 11 May 2010 at 18:56

dave-lew99 said:
We've been evaluating a few recently, but what if you need to log into a website for information or to place an order?

I don't know of any way round it, find a supplier who'll do multiple user accounts for you tied to the corporate account (depending what you're buying there are some good options here, some companies let a certain group of staff place order which have to be approved by a manager etc..).

Unless you use internal CRM and make one person responsible for interfacing with the supplier...

dave-lew99 · 11 May 2010 at 19:35

Making one person responsible is exactly what we're trying to avoid - as a small team any one of us can be out of the office and it causes problems if we try to move quickly.

The majority of our suppliers have proper corporate accounts with multiple users, it's just for the odd case, or where we need to follow correspondence - although i've not seen a nice solution which stops a user having to duplicate information between email and ERP.

Distribution lists and shared mailboxes are going to be the solution for us i think, it's straightforward anyway and if i set it up right then it should be easy to maintain.

iaind · 12 May 2010 at 08:06

Sharing logins for supplier websites etc isnt an issue - certainly not one an auditor will have a problem with. Provided you keep them securely and ensure only people who need them have access to them