Mind Mapping Software for Small Business Owners to Manage Customer Accounts

Many small business owners rely on the accounts of their customers to help maintain profits and facilitate growth. Because of the importance of these accounts, owners must keep careful track of payments received for services, as well as ensuring that payments are received in a timely manner. One tool that can be instrumental in helping small business owners manage their customer accounts is Mind Mapping software. With Mind Maps, owners can organize and track a variety of information using a creative and intuitive “mapping” format. The particular advantage of Mind Maps lies in their highly visual and associative imagery; the colors, pictures, and graphics contained in Mind Maps help facilitate mental recall and processing of the information. Thus, with Mind Mapping, small business owners can successfully manage their accounts more easily and effectively.

What is Mind Mapping Software?

Mind Mapping software is any software that is used to create diagrams, pictures, and other graphic visuals in order to show the relationship between ideas or other types of information.¹ With Mind Maps, the key concept or main idea of the information being presented is represented by a central image, located in the center of the map. Any themes surrounding the main idea are shown on “branches” that are attached to the central image, with subsequent themes of less importance attached by “child branches” or “twigs”. The resulting diagram is a “map” of the ideas and information shown in a spatial, rather than linear, format. Moreover, along with the ideas shown on the map are images, visual graphics, and colors that the constructor of the “map” associates with each of the themes and ideas. Mapping out information in this manner is widely believed to allow the brain to process the information in way that is more consistent with its natural functioning.

Using a Mind Map to Manage Customer Accounts

A small business owner has 8 accounts that he must manage for his painting supplies store. Tired of working with monotonous spreadsheets, the owner now decides he will organize the accounts by using a Mind Map. He begins his Mind Map by first placing a graphic representing his store in the center of the map. He then lists the 8 customer accounts he has on the “branches” stemming from the central image. Next to each customer account, on “child branches”, the owner lists the inventory he has delivered to the customer, the balance owed for the inventory, and any payments received. On the “twigs’ are listed the due dates of each payment, as well as an image indicating if the account is current or past due. The attached Mind Map represents what the owner’s map might look like for a given month.

Successfully Maintaining the Accounts Using the Mind Map

The small business owner, having “mapped out” his monthly accounting of customer payments, finds that he can more easily maintain the accounts than he would by using a spreadsheet. For one thing, the owner has the advantage of viewing the accounting information in a spatial, rather than linear, format. This format allows the owner to see all of his accounts at once, rather than having to scroll down, or switch, spreadsheets. Secondly, the owner has used colors and visuals that help him better conceptualize the data he is viewing. For instance, by using the color red and an image of an “X” to indicate past due accounts, the owner can quickly access the status of each account with just one look at the mind map. In addition, the Mind Mapping software capabilities allow the owner to update his map quickly and creatively by adding additional colors or images as needed. Thus, the owner has at his disposal a creative and highly functional tool for successfully managing his customer accounts.

1. Farrand, Paul; Hussain, Fearzana and Hennessy, Enid (May 2002). “The efficacy of the ‘mind map’ study technique”. Medical Education 36 (5): 426–431.