Importing a csv list of contacts defines the contact mangers intial setup. You can then setup additional fields and group fields together into "sections" from an administrative interface. Each field can be further defined by purpose (email, text, phone number) so can group email's together by contact and soon you could do other things based upon type of field, you can also have sub-contacts and then the sub-contacts are further defined by contact types so you can group together emails of all contacts by a certain type.
It took me longer then expected to make (about a month) but now I have a totally customizable contact manger that is more like a database in itself, it is searchable and very flexible (no predefined fields).
On the contact list display where you see few fields from each contact you can define what fields are displayed on that list and each user can change that to there own preference. This way the data is out front and may save users an extra click to go see some piece of contact data they use the most.
I am working on building a billing system for the twillio api, keeping track of all of the sms messages sent, phone calls made, etc. Once I am done with that then I can add to the contact manager functionality, let's say you have a non-profit and you have 500 contacts that are going to be doing your charity "fun run" you can send them out a reminder via a phone call and sms to remember to show up, etc. Once you have your contact in the system, you can make "lists" and so your contacts here would be on the "fun run 2010" list for example. Then next year you can send them an email inviting them to do the 2011 fun run...
I feel this is more modern at least in what I am doing as this can be as big as or small as a person needs. If a company has 100 fields (like the cw tv network does they easily have 100 fields which is who I designed this for) then it will work for that and if a company only has a few fields they can grow out to the number of fields they need but without having that overhead right away.
