In another first, Mike has just been sanctioned by Swiftpage as an “Act! Certified Expert”
As indicated in this previous blog post, Working with Act! Again, Mike has been working with Swiftpage for some months to identify and resolve outstanding issues and to improve the stability and functionality of the product. Now he is connected with the QA and Development teams in testing some of the enhanced and new features expected in 2018 before they go to beta and then release.
Some important ones regarding Office integration have been announced in this December 2017 Letter from Swiftpage’s President, Lorcan Malone to registered Act! users.
Please respond in the comments with any areas or bugs you think need additional testing.
For company owners and managers, an effective CRM program works wonders in helping you to measure and improve your business.
What about your sales staff? What benefit does it have for them? That is the question we will explore here. After all, if management fails to “sell” CRM to the staff, you will not get much benefit from using the CRM. To make that “internal sale,” here are the key CRM benefits for sales professionals.
1. More repeat orders and business from past customers
Asking a previous customer to buy again is much easier than attracting a new one. We all know that. However, most of us lack a systematic process to maintain relationships with past customers which means repeat sales are less likely. Adopting a CRM program makes it easier to manage customer relationships by providing you with notes, order activity and reminders to get in touch with past customers.
Tip: Use Act!’s Smart Task feature to remind you to get in touch with customers. Let’s take real estate as a quick example, Set a “time delay” on the Smart Task for 3-6 months after the sale. At that point, you will be reminded to get in contact with your customer. If they are satisfied, this is an excellent time to ask for a referral or surprise them with a gift.
2. Improve sales results on complex deals
Selling to a bank or another large company is often a long and drawn out process. I have seen cases where the buying process can take months or even more than a year. With millions of dollars in revenue at stake, staying involved is well worth the effort. Just think about how complicated the process can become! Each month, you may meet new people at your target company whom all have different interests and concerns. If you fail to keep those concerns straight, you are likely to ruffle feathers and lose the order.
Keep all your data, notes and observations in the CRM makes everything much easier in a complex sale. This same process also applies to high-value professional sales such as investment management, law and accounting. Attempting to keep all of that information clear in your head is asking for failure.
3. Spend more time with customers
Every month, your managers will probably ask you for reports and other data about your sales activities. Compiling these reports is a headache that nobody wants. You may not be able to eliminate reporting entirely, but you can cut it down substantially by using Act! once you have your desired reports in place.
Tip: If you save an hour per week from administration, that time savings will not automatically translate into higher income. To achieve that benefit, use that new time on high-value activities like prospecting for your dream clients.
4. Get better leads from the marketing department
Remember the classic sales movie “Glengarry Glen Ross?”
In the scene with Alec Baldwin’s characters, underperforming salesmen complain that “the leads are weak.” Baldwin’s character tears them apart for complaining about the leads. It may be one of the most iconic depictions of sales in pop culture. Too bad it is misleading!
In reality, the value of your leads may be weak! By keeping notes on your leads in Act!, you will be able to notice patterns. You may find that inbound leads who download a white paper are much more interested in hearing from you than any other type of lead. Once you understand that point, meet with your marketing colleagues to share your experiences, so they know what to continue.
Why do better leads matter? A higher quality lead is more likely to buy and become a long-term customer. Even better, you will reduce the pain and frustration of rejection dramatically. All of these benefits are possible by thoroughly using a CRM.
5. A full CRM keeps the sales manager away
Let’s face it: nobody likes to be nagged at the office or at home. If you are disciplined in keeping your deals up to date in the CRM, you will never hear another complaint from your manager again. That means less awkward conversations at the office for you. Isn’t that peace of mind alone worth 15 minutes a day to keep your CRM notes up to date?
Tip: If your company uses a “balanced scorecard” approach to performance reviews, check to see if consistent CRM use fits with that process.
6. You can make a better case for a pay increase
How can using your company CRM consistently help you to win a raise? Your manager may want to reward good performance. However, she needs to show a business case for that decision. Revenue numbers alone may be enough in some cases. Your request will be even more compelling if you can demonstrate that you are also keeping reliable records on your customers. Keeping those records demonstrates that you are committed to the CRM program. Showing you have a repeatable process to bring in new business – as documented by your actions in Act! – helps your manager understand that you can continue to develop stellar results.
Keep Growing: Our Two Recommended Sales Books
By the way, you do not have to stop with a CRM when it comes to helping your sales staff to improve. The following two books are industry classics for a reason – you can read them multiple times and profit each time. Each book is available in print, digital or audio format so even your field reps can access the books.
SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham.
Relying on a large scale research study into effective sales practices in B2B sales, this book explains a simple process you can use to make sales over and over again. By navigating the sales conversation through the “SPIN” process, your staff will be able to make more sales. What if your team does not have enough prospects? That is where our next title comes into the picture.
The Ultimate Selling Machine by Chet Holmes.
While much of the book is aimed at company owners and managers, your sales staff can also profit from reading this book. Holmes advocates focus in the prospecting process such as creating a list of your “Dream 20” clients and then pursuing them systematically. Holmes also shows how education based marketing plays a key role in attracting prospects to your organisation.
Think back to the start of your business. You may have been the only one generating sales, serving customers and keeping the books. Once your business achieves some growth, you will start to add a few sales staff. Now you have a problem. As a manager, you are a few steps removed from the sales process. How can you be sure your sales team are spending their time productively?
Whether you own the company or manage the sales department, you need high quality, timely information about the sales group. In my experience, using a CRM (customer relationship management) tool like Act! is critical to improving productivity, reliability and sales effectiveness in a growing business. Let’s start with the benefits for sales managers and company owners.
1. Never miss another customer opportunity
Following up with customer questions and inquiries is critical to close sales. If your sales staff are “managing” customer follow up from their inbox, you are likely losing sales opportunities. By using Act! to monitor and manage interactions with clients and prospects, you can keep your staff focused on the opportunities that matter. For example, you can track when a prospect’s contract with a competitor is set to expire. That tracking allows you to focus your resources on higher value sales opportunities. At a minimum, you should strive to follow up on leads within two business days to keep up with other companies:
Insight: According to – Kayak Online Marketing: “The average company takes 44 hours to respond to leads.”
Applying Act! To Your Business: Finding the “hot leads” for your business makes the sales process much easier. I recommend using Act’s Intelligent Call Lists feature to identify these leads. Calling a lead who has opened your weekly email newsletter for the past three weeks within minutes of receiving it may be a great fit for your business.
2. Detect high-performance sales activities and stars
Almost every sales team has one or two stars – the professional who significantly outperforms everyone else. They could be the person who never seems to have a “bad month” or who brings in the most profitable deals. Detecting the patterns behind these issues is difficult if you lack a system to organise the information. By using Act!, you can more quickly identify the indicators associated with top performance. For example, you may find that top performers routinely hit an individual activity metric each day (e.g. ten outbound messages to prospects attracted through inbound marketing). You can detect some of these patterns by using Act! to supplement your observations. With these insights, you can improve the productivity of your current sales staff and improve training for new hires.
Management Tip: Create a top performers report in Act! That shows your most productive sales staff and related metrics (e.g. number of deals, days elapsed to close the deal, new vs existing account and other measures).
3. Reduce sales administration time
Let’s say that your sales staff spend 4-8 hours per week on administration today. That covers everything from keeping up with email, filing orders and interacting with others parts of your company. While necessary, those efforts take time away generating new sales opportunities. By using Act!, you can cut that administration time significantly. For example, you can integrate email to Act! so that lead files are updated more quickly. Every automation measure means more time is available to deepen client relationships and start new ones.
Save Time Using Act! – With the “Smart Tasks” feature, you can make sure that your sales staff never miss another follow up with a potential customer. That is critical because larger value sales require you to build trust over time.
4. Deepen relationships at larger firms
It is easier to sell more to existing customers than attract new customers. Despite that truth, many companies do not have a systematic approach to their sales. Let’s say you were doing business with a division of BHP or IBM. There’s a good chance that other parts of the organisation could benefit from your products. However, selling more to a large firm often involves extensive research to discover the decision makers, subject matter experts and political situation. Asking your sales staff to keep track of this data without Act! is asking for trouble.
If you serve large, complex customers (or if you want to expand to that segment), a fully implemented CRM solution is critical.
5. Save time on accounting and customer service
Closing a sale on the phone or in a meeting is exciting for sales professionals. To maintain an excellent customer experience, the subsequent steps of your business process need to function smoothly. For example, issuing an accurate, complete quote or invoice to the client makes a positive impression. By integrating Act! with your accounting system, your sales staff save time in producing invoices and quotes and your accounting team has less paperwork to process.
Tip: If your company uses Quickbooks, Xero, or MYOB, you can easily integrate Act! into your accounting systems.
6. Start using email marketing to improve the bottom line
“A June 2016 survey of US marketers conducted by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and Demand Metric found that email had a median ROI of 122%—more than four times higher than other marketing formats examined, including social media, direct mail and paid search.” - eMarketer
Email marketing remains one of the most effective marketing methods on the market. Why? It all comes back to permission. If your prospects and clients have signed up to receive marketing email, you have direct access to your customers. If you are new to email marketing, there is a learning curve to get started. However, it is well worth the effort because of the high ROI email marketing delivers.
Act! makes it easy to get started with email marketing by providing an easy to use editor and templates. That means you can get started without paying for expensive graphic design services.
How do you “sell” your sales staff on adopting Act! in their daily work? We will cover that question in our next article.
Sync up to 45 000 contacts from your Act! database to Handheld Contact on your mobile device!
For those Handheld Contact customers that need more than 15,000 contacts on their mobile devices, we finally have a solution for you. Over the last two years HHC listened and increased the normal sync limit from 7000 contacts to the 15,000 limit where it is today, and that has proven sufficient for most of our subscribers.
However, we know some customers still require more, and for those people we're offering "HHC+" starting later in January for both IOS and Android device users. HHC+ will include an upgrade to an additional 15,000 contacts for only US$20 more per year, or an increase of 30,0000 contacts (for a total of 45,000) for only US$35 more. Australian and New Zealand pricing to be available soon.
One of the key changes we had to make to the mobile client was the ability to filter the export of the HHC contacts to the native address book, which you will soon be able to do through our new "Searches" feature. In other words, create a saved Search, do the lookup, and export those contacts (or updates) to your device's address book.
We caution some users with older devices (eg. iPhone 3 and 4) that increasing their sync contacts from 15,0000 to a total of 45,000 can cause some performance issues. Newer devices that we've tested have not demonstrated any degradation in performance.
Say hello to Act! v17, the newest and most intelligent version of the #1 best-selling contact and customer manager. With enhancements to integration and automation, it's easier than ever to turn your marketing efforts into successful sales.
Act! v17 is not just fixes – there are significant enhancements that make it easier than ever to turn your marketing efforts into successful sales. With the new enhancements to integration and automation, it’s easier than ever to turn your marketing efforts into successful sales. Finally – sales process meets nurture marketing.
Grow and connect with your audience – the newly enhanced, intelligent, integrated Act! emarketing experience helps you attract new customers and get more from existing relationships. Optimize your workforce and drive productivity with enhancements that help you save time and stay organized, including a dynamic view of all your contact interactions with Contact Timeline, new Smart Task automation, and numerous usability, installation, and configuration improvements.
Discover the new, modern look of Act!
Easily access resources, tools, and a variety of apps that help you get more out of your solution.
Explore the new look of Act! – updated icons, colours, and layouts help you navigate more easily, save time, and focus on what’s important.
Explore the new look of Act! – updated icons, colours, and layouts help you navigate more easily, save time, and focus on what’s important. Easily access a variety of apps, right from within the integrated Act! marketplace, that help extend the power and possibilities of your Act! solution – including dozens of premium apps for integrated accounting, data management and reporting, plus, exclusive discounts for Business Care Members!
Get the most out of Act! with helpful tips, access to webinars and tutorials, and updates on the latest news from Act! from the new Act! Welcome Page.
Enhanced Act! emarketing fuses your marketing and sales efforts together for individuals and now teams, by automating key follow-up activities driven by intelligence from campaigns and web forms.
Easily create simple web forms to capture leads from webpages, newsletters, emails, and more with Act! Lead Capture, now included with Act! emarketing!
Create, send, and track professional, eye-catching email campaigns that reach customers and prospects with the right message at the right time.
Know who to follow up with first with intelligent, prioritized Call Lists that close the gap between Marketing and Sales.
Find your best emarketing fit, with a new tier designed for teams, including additional contacts, Call List, and multiple profiles for sending email campaigns on behalf of your company, department, or individual team members.
Save time by automating key follow-up activities based on dynamic criteria you define, with new Smart Task options for Act! emarketing – such as automatically sending an email to welcome a new customer, scheduling activities to follow up with hot leads, and assigning contacts to a new owner.
NOTE: Act! emarketing Features are subscription-based services, Additional Fees apply
Optimize your workforce and drive productivity with enhancements to save time and stay organized
Now you can view all your interactions with a particular contact at a glance, with a new interactive visual timeline that helps you prepare for and personalize your customer interactions.
New Outlook sync options allow you the choice of 1-way sync of your Act! Contacts and Calendar to Outlook, 2-way sync information back to Act!, or to keep both separate.
Update contact records on-the-go, with new Act! Premium Mobile photo and document attachments.
Easily link documents from popular business tools such as Dropbox, SharePoint, iCloud, Google Docs and more, to contact records in Act!
Take advantage of new Smart Task options for sending Act! emarketing messages, assigning activities, and contact owner reassignment that give you powerful automation, so you don’t miss a beat.
Get more done with streamlined configuration and access options
Make sure more of your team is in-the-know – create read-only licenses for additional members of your business or team – at no extra charge!
Easily create and distribute Act! Premium for Web remote databases and offline clients, directly via your web browser.
Improved global preference management allows you to automatically deploy, activate, and customize default user preferences for multiple users in a snap. Thus allowing you to set up instances quickly and easily.
Hide inactive users from drop-downs to help speed up data entry.
Seamlessly import contacts from CSV files to Act! Premium for Web.
Behind-the-scenes performance and usability enhancements for peace of mind.
Automated silent install for larger deployments and enhancements to Global Preferences – all designed to help your efficiency.
This is the official information from Sage. I will soon post an article on my opinions of the new version.
Update: Sage have release a day-0 Hotfix 1 … Any installs from now will get this update slipstreamed and there will be a download soon for the early birds. As soon as I find out what this fixes, I’ll let you know.
The Sage ACT! 2012 release is focused on a number of significant enhancements including Google® Integration, Scratchpad, Connected Services, Universal Search and much more. All this enables you to work and communicate more effectively, become more productive and efficient, and better serve your contacts. Click on one of the links below for more information on the specified topic.
New Features and Functionality
For details regarding each new feature, click the link for Knowledgebase article for that feature. Google Contacts, Calendar and Gmail Integration
Contact Synching capabilities from Google to Sage ACT! and Sage ACT! to Google.
Contact Sync set capabilities to allow users to select a sub-set of their Sage ACT! contacts to synch over to Google.
Calendar synching that allows users to update both their Google and Sage ACT! Calendars and have them synch regardless of where events were created or modified.
The ability to choose which systems alarms display in for events.
Users can select whether they want Sage ACT! or Google to “win” for conflict resolution when both calendars have been changed.
Activity type synching options allow users to choose which activity types will synch. The defaults options are Appointments and Meetings.
Scheduling synching options as frequently as one minute is available, but to limit performance impact, the suggested synching interval is 10 minutes.
A new Google Integration synchronization panel from the Tools menu is available to set up both Contact and Calendar synchronization at once.
Users now have the ability to find that key documents or piece of information they need in their contacts, groups, companies, opportunities, notes, history, and attachments, because search is faster and more expansive than ever.
The ability to perform advanced search using operators
Filter search criteria by all dates, last 24 hours, last week, and last month
View search results displayed by relevance and double-click on the item of interest to be taken to that particular field or attachment.
Users can also filter search results for secondary contacts and products
A new Connections view within the Sage ACT! application that helps users sign-up and learn more about Connected Services that could improve their bottom line and efficiencies in running their business.
Users can manage their existing Connected Services through this view.
For new customer installs, third party applications such as Microsoft® Office, Microsoft Outlook® and Internet Explorer® do not need to be closed before Sage ACT! installation. Users can now continue to be productive while Sage ACT! installation is progressing.
Installation panel that provides prerequisites and average times to install before installation begins.
When Sage ACT! detects that the user is attempting to integrate Microsoft® Outlook® 64-bit with Sage ACT!, a message dialog will be displayed that states that Microsoft Outlook 64-bit is not supported, and that the 32-bit version is supported.
Web Administration (Sage ACT! Premium web client)
Ability to manage critical administration tasks from Sage ACT! Premium (access via web) client.
Fixed Issues for Sage ACT! Pro and Sage ACT! Premium
Synchronization – Remote Databases
In previous versions, changing fields to a different drop down field list does not sync to remote databases. This issue has now been resolved.
In previous versions, updates on the parent database do not get synchronized to remote if both sides modify the same contact. Original data on the remote replaces the changes on the parent. This issue is now resolved.
The changes made in the document attached to a contact in the remote database are not synchronized to the document on the parent database. After editing and syncing to parent, a GUID number is added to the file and updated properly on the remote database. On the parent, the document is still linked to the original file name. On remote, the document is linked to the edited attachment. This issue is resolved.
Outlook contacts are removed from the remote database after syncing to parent. Issue is now fixed.
Resolved issue of not being able to change settings on multiple remote databases.
Outlook Integration
There was an issue where Contact and Calendar sync were failing with the following combination of conditions: User Account Control (UAC) in Windows® is turned ON, sync is run from the Sage ACT! menu or sync is run from the Sage Integration menu, and both Outlook and Sage Integration are run as/by a Windows Standard user. This issue has now been resolved. In other user privilege combinations and if a failure occurs, the proper messaging guiding users on how to resolve the issue is displayed.
Issue where the Outlook add-in for Sage ACT! displays a runtime error during loading when upgrading to Sage ACT! 2011 SP1, is now resolved.
Performance degradation when loading task list after sending an email using Outlook. Specific to Windows 7 and Office 2007 environments. Issue has been resolved.
In Terminal Services environment, Act.Outlook.Sync.exe errors display when logging in with multiple users. Multiple users can now log on to the same machine and sync Sage ACT! and Outlook simultaneously.
When attempting to send an email to two separate distribution lists on the same email, the email will not attach back into Sage ACT!. Issue has been resolved.
Contacts/Companies
Issue of not being able to continue using Sage ACT! without saving company name has been resolved.
Salutation field is deleted when users have set a preference to not fill the salutation field. Issue has been fixed.
Error while editing data in Company list view while in customize columns mode. Issue has been fixed.
In the Company detail view, if a user creates a company with divisions and then expands the tree view in the left navigation to show divisions and then switches the layout of the detail view to another layout, the expansion in the left navigation collapses.
Company name is right justified after performing a lookup. Issue is now resolved.
Import/Export
If contact with several names is not mapped in the multiple contact name dialog, nothing is imported into the database. Issue has been fixed.
Contacts of Opportunities are not exported when export from one database to another database. Issue has been fixed.
Import from Microsoft Excel® showing incorrect date format. Issue has been resolved.
Security
Emails sent to other users incorrectly adds the file to the attachment supplemental files folder. Issue has been resolved.
Lookups
No response after clicking Go to Advanced Query link on Lookup Opportunities view. Issue has been fixed.
Record Manager listed as Manager when doing lookups. Issue has been fixed.
Copy Database/Save As/New
The issue of not being to delete users in empty copy databases after applying Sage ACT! 2011 SP1 has now been resolved.
The issue of not being able to change default duplicate checking criteria in empty copy database after applying Sage ACT! 2011 SP1 is now resolved.
Teams created when setting team level security in empty copy database.
Reports
Gross Margin by Product calculated total cost incorrectly. Issue has been fixed.
Opportunity by Product does not display correct information. Issue has been fixed.
Issue of Group reports coming up blank when all sub groups are selected for selected groups is now resolved.
Smart Tasks
Deleting or changing an attachment to a Smart Task step after that Smart Task has been set to auto-run will result in no attachments being included in the Smart Task step. Issue has been resolved.
Activities/Notes/Histories
When adding a resource to an Activity in Sage ACT!, the activity is duplicated in the task list if the filter criteria for the task list is set to “all users”.
Restore
Database Restore does note restore custom layout. Workaround: Use "Restore As" function instead of "Restore".
Sage ACT! Email Client
Attaching emails to contact history is not working from the Sage ACT! Email client. History recording to Groups or Companies does not work as well for emails from Sage ACT! Email.
Other
Error message displays when users select “Add Permissions” link in Manage Users dialog. The link now opens correctly without error message.
Sage ACT! Office Add-in disables Quick Print function in Microsoft Word 2007/2010 after applying Sage ACT! 2011 SP1 update. Issue has been resolved.
Company Web Info tab links are not refreshed with current entity data if Web Site field has never contained data. Issue has been resolved.
Information on relationship between two contacts is not saved when using the Relationship hyperlink. Issue is now fixed.
When printing calendars using Quick Print, data from days other than those showing on the screen are printing.
When using the Facebook® and Google® links in Internet Explorer® 8, information will not display in the web info tab because of changes made by these sites to not display in frames. Issue has been resolved.
OLEDB Provider – Ambiguous Column Name when querying table with spill-over tables.
Alarms – Snoozing alarms causes error: Index was outside the bounds of the array.
Follow up activities not marked private even though the preference of "Make new activities public" is unchecked. Issue is now resolved.
If a user edits a layout within the first two minutes of opening Sage ACT!, Sage ACT! will switch between views and the layout designer 5 times. This behaviour is intentional; therefore we do not have plans to turn off background loading at this time. Workaround: Wait for more than two minutes before editing layouts after opening Sage ACT!.
When performing a mail merge to a Microsoft® Word document using Microsoft Word 2010, no history record is created for the record.
Fixed Issues for Sage ACT! Premium (access via web)
Installation/Uninstall
Syncconfigfile.xml file not copied during install, resulting in not being able to set up the Sage ACT! Internet Sync service. Issue has now been resolved.
Contacts/Companies
Contact Detail view is blank after selecting contacts from the contact lookup list, and when users navigate to other views, they are logged out of the database. Issue has been resolved.
Clicking on an email address in contact list gives a 404 error. Issue has been fixed.
When Customizing Columns in Contact List view, the dialog is in a distorted view that displays only the Available Fields. Issue is not resolved.
Activities
Resolved the issue of not being able to sort activities by date or time from Web client when start time is after 5:00 PM.
Outlook Integration
Outlook displays error about missing .dll files when loading Outlook integration. Outlook integration is now loaded without errors.
Sage ACT! address book is not listed as an available address book in Outlook for Outlook integration. Issue is now resolved.
When updating the time on a Sage ACT! activity and checking the “send invitation email” box on the activity dialog, the sender will get an updated iCalendar invitation, but the time still shows the original time for the activity. Workaround: The sender must manually change the activity time and/or date inside the email message. The manually updated message does update the receiver’s existing Outlook Calendar. Note: Microsoft currently has no plans to refresh the cache more often or provide a mechanism for Sage ACT! to refresh their cache due to performance.
Act.Outlook.Sync.exe errors when logging in with multiple users in Terminal Services. Issue has been resolved.
Preferences
Fixed the issue of not being able to change record creation options from the Web database client.
Opportunities
Custom date ranges on opportunity list filters does not return any results/data. Issue has been fixed.
Lookups/Keyword Search
Sorting on results of contact column after performing keyword search does not sort in any logical order. Issue is now resolved.
Lookup Keyword Search does not find all records, specifically is searching the Current Lookup. Issue has now been resolved.
Mail Merge
When Microsoft Word is set as the word processing editor for Sage ACT! Premium (access via web), if a user opens the mail merge fields dialog to add fields to the mail merge template, the fields are not in alphabetical order. Issue has been resolved.
Mail merge to Microsoft Word and print does not record history. Issue has been resolved.
Firefox™ Web Browser
Unable to perform advanced queries when accessing the web database client via Firefox®. Issue has been resolved.
Login
User logs in and in a varying time from 5 minutes to 20 minutes, the user will start getting a pop up message stating "Continue to stay logged in". The user then receives this same popups every 1,2, or 5 minutes asking them to click to continue. Issue has now been resolved.
I have thought about today’s Challenge post for a while and, with this blog being about ACT!, there was not much I could think of to take a picture that would be relevant.
So I’ve taken a screen shot of a menu that describes how proper use of ACT! will benefit you:
If you can’t find these functions in your copy of ACT!, I suggest you speak to your ACT! Certified Consultant. These are the people who do more that the break-fix support you might get from a vendor support contact.
A good ACC will take the time to understand your business and the workflow of your operations. They will then assist you in designing ACT! in the best possible way to achieve your goals using functions within the product or some of the many powerful add-ons that extend it’s use.
The ACC can then assist with planning and implementing your installation roll-out including importing your data, connecting to other systems and training your users and administrators to properly get the maximum benefit from the product.
An investment in a good Certified Consultant will generate a Return many times in better managing your contacts
Normally I try to get this out during the beta period. But, for various reasons, I’ve only been able to get to this now.
Sage ACT! 2011 has added a whole swag of new functions, improvements in usability and fixes to issues. I’m going to try and cover the ones that I have found to be most useful. Unfortunately, a couple are only useful to those within North America… but such is the lack of ability of the regional offices to test the functions and respond.
For the full, public list, please refer to these ACT! Knowledgebase Articles:
Obviously, before you upgrade you should ensure your system, and any add-ons or plugins, support the new version or if they need an update as I suggested in the article: Upgrading ACT!, especially when you are using add-ons
One change worth noting first is the product name changes:
ACT! by Sage is now Sage ACT! Pro
ACT! by Sage Premium is now Sage ACT! Premium (access via Windows)
ACT! by Sage Premium for Web is now Sage ACT! Premium (access via web)
Other than ongoing improvements in stability and speed, the biggest new items are:
Smart Tasks
Smart Tasks allow you to schedule a series of common and connected steps. You can use the Smart Task templates that Sage ACT! provides* or create your own using the Smart Tasks Manager. Smart Tasks can be run manually or scheduled to run automatically.
Note: I think this feature is the one that should easily justify the upgrade for most users.
Outlook Integration allows you to synchronize your activities and contacts between Sage ACT! Premium and Outlook. You can set synchronization options to determine what information is synchronized. Synchronization can be scheduled to run automatically or manually run at any time.
Note: I strongly suggest users be careful with using these options as I’ve found some odd behaviour. While some of the bugs have now been fixed with Hotfix 1 for Sage ACT! 2011, others are still problems. For example, the fact that it doesn’t sync the country code with phone numbers makes it useless for anyone who wants to call internationally or to use the numbers when travelling – this is the same as one of the bugs I identified in ACT! Mobile Live.
Sage Business Info Services for ACT!
Sage Business Info Services for ACT!* (provided by Hoover's™) provides tools to access critical business information for your contacts and companies. With Sage Business Info Services for ACT!, you can: Build a list of companies and people and then import these lists directly into your database. Access links from the contact and company Web Info tab. These links provide key information about your contacts' and companies' profile, financial details, company contacts, industry information, and company news. Subscribe to alerts to notify you when key changes occur for the contact or company.*Requires additional subscription.
Note: This service provides very limited benefit to those of us outside North America or United Kingdom as you can see from the Hoovers' Companies By Geography list
Sage E-marketing for ACT!*
Sage E-marketing for ACT! is replacing the name for the connected E-marketing service, formerly ACT! E-marketing. There is a new icon for the contact toolbar as well. *Requires additional subscription.
Sage E-marketing for ACT! is integrated “out of the box” with Sage ACT! 2011 Smart Tasks (3 Smart Task templates require a subscription to Sage E-marketing for ACT!).
Email templates can now be launched as landing pages (web pages hosted by Swiftpage™).
The service now has an Advanced Template Editor that can be used to edit imported templates.
The template manager has been redesigned to help users manage, edit, publish/distribute, and launch landing pages easier.
Swiftpage has added support for Microsoft® PowerPoint®, Microsoft Excel®, and text files as documents that can be linked from an email template.
Documents and images can be managed in a library format instead of uploaded individually for each template. The document library can store up to 100 documents, and the image library can store up to 500 images.
Security, Administration and Other Improvements
Increased Security for Attachments and Notes/History Editing Within Your Database
Company Security
Import Data Changes: New Express Method, Ability to Create New Fields On-the-Fly During Import, and Synonym Mapping
Installation and upgrading seems much more reliable
Parallels (for Mac users) now officially supported as well as VMWare, Sun Virtual Box and Citrix
Web version now supports native Firefox 3.5 and 3.6 … I’ve also found it seems to run ok in a brief test with Firefox 4.0b6 and Google Chrome, but these aren’t “officially” supported
I often get asked or see on-line posts asking this question and people seem surprised when I, as an ACT! Evangelist, tell then that it can’t be answered without more detailed information. This is especially important in the SME market where there is a greater range of options available than in the Enterprise space.
Any recommendations without this info would be like asking for the best car or religion, and any suggestions would be akin to the adage "If the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems look like nails"
You need to identify your needs:
How many users are you expecting to have? Now and over the next 12-18 months.
How many records (contacts and/or companies)? Also now and over next 12-18 months
Where is your data sourced from (initial setup and on-going leads)? For example: your web site, external companies, social media, Excel, paper entry
What do you want to do with the data? Reports, email merges, news letters, etc You need to involve internal users at different levels (sales, marketing, management)
Do you want to integrate with legacy systems – accounting, ERP or other software?
Do you want to integrate with new technologies – social media, Twitter, LinkedIN, etc?
Do you want remote access – remote offices, laptop users, smart phones? If so, do you have reliable internet connectivity?
What sort of security is important to you? Eg should all users be able to see/edit all records?
What sort of infrastructure do you have – operating systems, hardware, network. Would you be prepared to invest in improving this?
Do you have your own IT? If so, will they need training to administer the new system?
What sort of support do you think you’ll need?
What sort of budget do you have?
One common issue is looking at management needs (administration and reporting) over usability... if the users find it to complex to use or un-helpful to them, they won't enter good data. Then any reports will be meaningless.
Remember that your customer database can be one of your most valuable assets and equipping your business with the right tools to mine that asset can produce valuable returns – especially when financial times are perceived to be tough.
Often the best way to to it right is to speak to a consultant in the field to provide some advice. Here is an article that I did on picking a CRM consultant: How to pick the right CRM Consultant
When speaking to vendors, and even many consultants, remember their competitive info isn't always accurate. You need to do your own research if you are comparing products.
You really want to know “What’s the best CRM solution for YOU?” Anyone who makes a recommendation without knowing or asking these questions can’t possibly be answering that.
The question was: How do you protect the value of your brand when "the creation of value is in the eyes of the consumers?"
Every product will have unhappy users or even competitors posting on-line about them. This is unavoidable, if you don't have any problems, either the product does nothing or you don't have very many users :-)
The most important focus in the current market is for the vendor to properly engage and respond to their users. The number of complaining ACT! consumers has dropped since Sage North America has started talking to their users via their Community Site – something I blogged about previously
The new wave of consumers, the "Millennial generation" (born 1982-2002), are starting to be a larger percentage of the market. But they are much more likely to look for product information and references from on-site forums than vendor sites. The power of communications is in the control of these users and it is necessary to realise this in-order to attract, serve and retain users in this new market.
In these times of social media, it is necessary to meet the user base where they choose, not simply hope they will come to you. It also requires doing regular searches of the most common sites (like Twitter) for comments (positive or negative) and actually respond to show that they are being listened to.
With the global effect of the internet not fitting into the regionalisation that Sage's corporate structure uses, it is also necessary to encourage the regional OpCos to step up... to take part on this site, to create their own blogs and Twitter accounts. I have been speaking to Aldo in the Sage AU office about providing them some training in social media and helping them get up to speed with efficient ways to utilise these technologies. But they don't always have the resources necessary. Maybe this is one area that Sage Global can assist the regions in?
These steps should not just be looked at to "protect the brand" but, if done correctly, they can be a significant step in enhancing that brand.
This view has additional implications for Sage. As users of their three CRM products (ACT!, SageCRM and SalesLogix) their own user base will be looking for leadership in this area from Sage. It has certainly been positive to hear that Sage is working at integrating social media into the products so that their users will be able to better monitor and enhance their own brand’s reputation in the market.
It is useful to note that during previously perceived "tough times", ACT! does quite well.
It's an easy argument to make that, during these times, businesses need to make the most from their assets - especially the ability to mine the valuable asset of their client base and providing better customer service for new and current contacts. CRM is a MUST HAVE to survive these times.
Compared to other CRM solutions, ACT!'s pricing makes it an easier choice - especially against SaaS solutions as ACT! isn't tied to regular payments that drain cash-flow. The lower entry point, while also using a powerful SDK allowing add-on and custom solutions to provide the answers to business needs.
The general reputation of reliability and support for ACT! (that did admittedly take a hit with the 7.0 and 8.0 releases) is enviable. A product that doesn’t require expensive support contracts is another way to keep the cash-flow in your favour
The stated aims of Sage, now that the core product is back to it's desired quality, to integrate better with back-end ERP (accounting) systems and with social media will further cement the product as the central repository for business intelligence.
This is a time that Sage and its channel should capitalize on and, if the users are well looked after, will create long-term clients for Sage Software - with ACT! itself, and also users who may eventually upgrade to SageCRM / SalesLogix and even those who incorporate Sage ERP products.
A couple of users asked me about the history of ACT!, so I thought I'd post what I could remember:
1986 Conductor Software (Mike Muhney and Pat Sullivan) developed QuotePro in Lotus Symphony. When this failed to be successful, they came up with another idea...
1987 ACT! for DOS 1.0 (April 1st) - previously codenamed “YES!” – a recursive acronym for "Yes, Everybody Sells!". ACT! was also originally an acronym - first for "Activity Control Technology" and later "Automated Contact Tracking", before becoming just "ACT!"
1988 Conductor Software renamed to Contact Software International on the advice of marketing gurus and authors, Jack Trout and Al Ries. They were also helped, in the early days by PR “Top Guns”, Regis McKenna - where Steve Jobs turned to for help for his fledgling company called Apple
1990 ACT! for DOS 2.0 (August) - first version with network support
1991 ACT! for Windows 1.0 - CodeBase IV engine compatible with dBase
1992 ACT! for Windows 2.0 - Added network support for the Windows product
1992 ACT! for HP95LX - the first mobile version for PDAs
1992 ACT!PAK! - first add-on for ACT! developed by Oakhurst Systems
1992 1st ACT! - cut down version for OEMs and single users.
2003 ACT! for Web 1.0 for ACT! 6.0 - originally by dbDynamics
2004 ACT! by Sage 2005 (7.0) - Complete re-write with .Net 1.x and MS SQL 2000
2005 ACT! by Sage 2006 (8.0)
2006 ACT! by Sage 2007 (9.0) - Changed to .Net 2.0 and MS SQL 2005
2007 ACT! by Sage 2008 (10.0) - MS Vista and Office 2007 support. 10.02 added ability to add custom sub-tables via the SDK.
2008 Launch of Community.act.com site (January) – Much improved communication between senior management and users
2008 ACT! by Sage 2009 (11.0) – New Dashboard. Significantly improved Outlook integration and major improvements in stability, reliability, ease of install and speed. Added Vista x64 support and Safari for MAC users. Also free plug-in to provide links to Social Media such as LinkedIN
2009 ACT! by Sage 2009 (11.1) – Added Relationship Tab. Expected in March?
2009 Handheld Contact adds support for iOS – iPhone (iPad later)
2009 ACT! by Sage 2010 (12.0) – eMarketing plus ability to set database currency
2010 Sage ACT! 2011 (13.0) – Rename of product, Smart Tasks, sync of contacts and activities with Outlook
2011 Sage ACT! 2012 (14.0) – Google contacts, activity sync and History, Scratchpad, Universal Search
2012 Handheld Contact adds support for Android phones and tablets
2012 Sage ACT! 2013 (15.0) – Social Updates and Smart Tasks improvements
2013 Sage ACT! 2013 (15.1) – Adds support for later operating systems, Office and browser versions
2013 Act! 2014 (post soon to this blog) – Re-branding, many productivity and administration enhancements to desktop, user/layout administration via Premium Web, Mobile web improvements
I don't know how useful this is to anyone, but was kind of nostalgic digging up my memories.
