I have read a number of posts regarding the uselessness of DLs in
Outlook. I would love it if someone could enlighten me as to the best
alternative. Here's the situation:

Our customers' information is collected in a "back-office" system, and
of course this information includes e-mail address, phone, fax,
etc...things that would be useful to have in Outlook. We currently
have one Public Contact Folder with various DLs that we are updating
manually (customers could be in one or several of the distribution
groups). The updating of the Contact Folder is a breeze...I delete all
the entries and then import a text file from our back-office system
that contains the up to date information (I find this method useful as
it gets rid of inactive customers, ensures that new customers are
added, and of course includes any changes). This has worked until
someone wanted these contacts also broken down into groups, where, as I
stated before, some of the customers could be in multiple groups.

What I would like to do is use our back-office system to indicate which
group(s) the customer should belong to and somehow magically build the
distribution groups (I know that sounds more like using the category
feature in Outlook, but I can dream can't I?).

So, I am looking for (unless someone can tell me how to automatically
update a DL) an alternative. I have contemplated creating multiple
Contact folders for each desired group, but any advice would be
appreciated!