To Cloud your #CRM or Not to Cloud. For that is the question

How to make users feel that using cloud can like trekking through a Brazilian jungle.

I’m guessing that many you might be aware of the issue with Amazon’s S3 cloud storage service which led to massive outages across the internet.

So far, Amazon has not given an indication as to the cause.

 

The only news on their site at this time is that the problems have been resolved: https://status.aws.amazon.com/

But why did it take down so much of the internet?

Yes, many applications were down for some hours. Buffer, Slack, Trello, and a great many more were unusable (or barely usable) during the time that Amazon had their outage.

According to the Synergy Research Group’s 2017 report, Amazon Web Services owns more than a whopping 40 percent share of the global public cloud services market.Other providers, such as Google, Microsoft and IBM are small players by comparison.

So maybe you can understand that when Amazon coughs, we all get colds.

What does this have to do with CRM?

Remember: There is no cloud, it’s just someone else’s computer

More and more, the major (and not so major) CRM providers have been pushing users to move their data to the vendors’ cloud systems. Even Swiftpage has been doing this with Act!.

Of course, there is a big advantage to the vendor to push for these subscriptions – They don’t have to add any real value to the product in order to keep getting your money. A case in point for this is the lack of any new serious functionality in Act! v19. Something I blogged about, here: What’s coming in Act! v19 – Good, bad or very ugly?

Although, more recently, the vendors have even put their on-premises products on the subscription model (Microsoft’s Office 365 and Swiftpage’s Act! are examples of this strategy to get users paying every year. They’ve both overly inflated the pricing of the “outright purchase” or “perpetual” licenses. They’ve also come down hard on the users who would consider buying outright, by making some features only available on subscription and (as Swiftpage says they’ll be doing for Act!) refusing to provide bug-fix updates within the version you purchased.

What are the advantages and disadvantages to you?

 

Advantages of cloud implementations:

• No need for server hardware CAPEX
• The IT costs can be reduced
• Maintenance, upgrades and support are handled by the vendor
  • This can be an issue when they update their version and break things that you use
• Can be easier to access from anywhere – This requires extra work for on-premises
• You, or your IT, are responsible for security if you make it available externally.
• There used to be a reduced upfront cost for the cloud, when compared to on-premises. But, with more vendors moving their on-premises versions to subscription, this is nolonger an advantage

 

Advantages of on-premises implementations:

• Retain 100% ownership of your data
  • How well do you trust the vendor to stay in business?
  • What happens to your data if they close?
• Retain 100% of the integrity of your data
  • About 6 months ago, Salesforce lost 4-5 hours of client data in May 2016
    The outage was caused by a problem with the database. So the folks at Salesforce restored the database back to the time before the problem occurred, four hours earlier, which deleted the previous data, Salesforce explained in a report on its Salesforce Trust page.
• Retain 100% of the security of your data
  • In 2007, a salesforce.com employee fell victim to a targeted phishing scam and was tricked into providing admin credentials to the perpetrators.
  • Last year, LinkedIn, had 117Million accounts hacked with details up for sale
  • Also last year, Yahoo disclosed a hack of more than 1Billion accounts
  • Does your cloud vendor use two-step authentication?
    If not, run (don’t walk) away to use something else.
    Hacks will get more common. If your vendor hasn’t made this a priority, they simply do not care about your data and you shouldn’t be giving it to them
• Less susceptible to external connectivity
  • Not all areas have great internet access
  • Because Handheld Contact for Act! stores the data on the device, I regard it as the best solution for Act! users with iPhones, iPads, Androids or Blackberrys
• Less susceptible to an issue like the recent Amazon one
• Sometimes greater functionality is available in the desktop version
• Often a wider range of integration possibilities
• Ability to customise your CRM solution with add-ons or custom written code that might not be possible in a cloud version

 

How about a hybrid solution?

One of the areas that Act! does best at, is the hybrid solution of using both delivery systems.

This can be a useful compromise:

• You still need your own IT – In-house or out-sourced
• You might still be susceptible to the security issues above … at both sides.
• You can pull your data out in any way you choose
• You are not constrained by internet access and can use the data via an app on your phone or laptop even when out of range.
• Access to both sets of integration and customisation options.
• You’d barely notice an outage from Amazon or the software vendor

 

After all this, what’s best for you?

And that’s really the question to ask. Each person will have a quite different view on this.

• You need to properly document your needs. This article might help: What’s the best CRM?
• You should try to find a VAR or Consultant who’s unbiased in this area so they can look at YOUR needs, rather than selling you something when there were better options. For some assistance in this area, read: How to pick the right CRM consultant for you

Please add a comment to this post with any thoughts you might have on the subject.

 

Technorati Tags: Act,Act!,Act CRM,CRM,cloud,security,smartphone,mobile crm,Swiftpage,LinkedIn,Hacked

What’s coming in Act! v19 – Good, bad or very ugly? #ActCRM

 

As Swiftpage is expected to release Version 19 of Act! this week, I thought I’d post a summary of what to expect with this release.

Update 13th January 2016 with first look opinion on the Act! Companion.

64-bit MS-Office Compatibility

Act! will now work with 64-bit versions of some Microsoft Office applications: 
Outlook, Word and Excel. While their marketing is making claims about Act! being “64-bit compatible”, it’s just the MS-Office integration that has changed.

It has taken a long time for Swiftpage to do this. However, I have found several disappointing bugs with the new version, with both 64-bit and 32-bit versions of Office 2016.

These include incorrect handling of international data and some functions just crash and kick you out of Act!

Swiftpage have decided they don’t want to hear about bugs I uncover, so I’m not aware if they even know about these, yet. I will provide more details in a future post.

At this time, I would avoid upgrading to version 19 if Office integration is important to you.

Act! Companion mobile app*

I haven’t had access to this product to test, so I don’t know how reliable it is.
Certainly the functionality of it doesn’t come close to Handheld Contact.

Here’s a screen shot and summary from their marketing guff:

Stay connected to key Act! Premium details when on the move with Act! Companion — a native mobile app designed for your iPhone® or Android™

• Contact, activities and history are available. Users get alerted when new contacts, activities or history items are created.
• Capture notes during meetings
• Email or call your Act! Premium contacts from the app
• Do work in a social way with @mentions and simple text updates
• Intelligent notifications sent directly to the home screen of your phone keep you on task and on time

They say it will support iOS versions 9.x and up, and Android Lollipop, KitKat, and Marshmallow

Their marketing acknowledges that this doesn’t have the functionality to replace their Act! Premium Mobile product.

Update after some testing:

• When the Login fails, it gives no indication of why
• The fields are not named the same as they are in Act!, causing confusion.
• The buttons are very small and not easy to select
• Search doesn’t seem to work
• Most of my activities aren’t showing
• Notifications don’t show enough detail to let you know what the activity actually is
• The adding of History, add a To-Do with a Blank Regarding

I honestly can’t believe that anyone who uses Act! actually tested this in beta. It’s not release quality.

Additionally, It requires the v19 WebAPI, which has some serious security implications that I’ll be blogging on in the future. I don’t recommend installing or using the WebAPI at this time.

Note: This feature will only be available to Premium subscribers. Users of Pro won’t have it.

Act! Premium Contact Link*

I’m not sure why Swiftpage list this as a new feature.
This is NOT something new for v19 as it has already been available in v18 Premium

The functions included are:

• Create new Act! Premium contacts or edit existing ones. But it doesn’t correctly handle international data and only lets you add/edit a very small range of fields
• You can schedule new activities with the contacts – But only if you are scheduling To-dos.
• You can view some of the history of the contacts
• Attach the text of an Outlook email to contacts – With less functionality than the normal Outlook integration.

While it does look pretty, it is at best a proof concept idea and not ready for prime time
It’s slow, clumsy and lacks functionality available in the standard Outlook integration for Act!.
I’d guess that no-one that really uses Act! had a hand in it’s design.
Which sadly seems common for functions that Swiftpage have been adding.

It requires the v18 or v19 WebAPI, which has some serious security implications that I’ll be blogging on in the future. I don’t recommend installing or using the WebAPI at this time.

Note: This feature is only be available to Premium subscribers. Users of Pro won’t have it.

Act! emarketing improvements

Swiftpage have made the following improvements to their Act! emarketing

• Send Act! emarketing campaigns up to 5 times faster
• Campaign management improvements:
  • Get instant feedback on your current Act! emarketing service level before sending email campaigns
  • Quickly and easily see email campaign history for a given contact
  • Don’t worry about accidental sends! A send confirmation dialog will now check to make sure you’re ready to send an email campaign
• Enhanced send email campaign dialog - See live details about your contact limit, usage this month, and new recipients
• Campaign history overwrite creates and updates one history entry

The Act! emarketing product still has a very long way to go in order to match competitive products like MailChimp (which can be integrated with Act!), or even their own (seemingly forgotten) Swiftpage emarketing for Act!.

The only reason to not consider a better emarketing system is if you’re only using Act! Premium Web.
The Act! emarketing product is the only one that currently works with the web version.

Customer-­driven feature enhancements

Swiftpage’s marketing lists a section called “Customer-­driven feature enhancements”. It’s a shame that they don’t listen to customers with their other features.

• Refreshed standard reports with some minor improvements. There is hope that they’ll be adding integration with Microsoft’s Power BI sometime in the future to add the type of reporting functionality that users really need.
• Added more functions to the Web and Cloud versions, that were previously only in the Windows desktop product:
  • Scan for duplicates
  • Formatting toolbar in the Layout Designer
• Defects fixed. You can see an extensive list of fixes listed in this Act! Knowledgebase Article: What's new in Act! v19

Final Comment

All in all, it’s a pretty poor effort of an upgrade. More like an 18.5 than a v19. While there is an extensive list of bug-fixes, it seems the new functions have added plenty of bugs of their own.

I’d strongly advise holding off any upgrades unless you require integration with 64-bit Office. Sadly, those using Swiftpage’s Cloud product won’t have an option as their Cloud is likely to be updated on the first weekend after release.

Also, as I stated above, I’d avoid installing WebAPI, at least until Swiftpage chooses to address the security issues in it. They also really need to improve it’s functionality to be close to what’s been available for a long time with the Act! SDK such as UI modifications and the creation/using of custom tables.

I find it very saddening to see, after 30 years I have supported the product, that what is essentially a set of bug fixes is masquerading as a “new” version.

 

Technorati Tags: Act,!ct!,Act! CRM,ACTCRM,CRM,Office,Swiftpage,iOS,iPad,iPhone,Android,v19

Backup Act! CRM Data to the Cloud with @Dropbox as a Service

A couple of years ago, in an article called Taking your ACT! on Holiday, I discussed the use of Dropbox to help with off-site backups. One of the issues with this is that Dropbox only uploads the files when you’re logged into the system and that means it’s not a great option for backing up the database on your server.

A little research and some testing later, and I have the solution for you –

Run Dropbox as a Windows service

What this means is that, when Windows is running, Dropbox will also be running without you needing to be logged in to the server. The benefit of this is that Dropbox will be able to keep uploading backups created by the Act! Scheduler to the cloud.

So, how do we go about this? Well, we need to install Dropbox and set it up as a service.

Setting up

1. Log into your Windows Server as a local administrator
2. Download the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit, which you can download from:
   https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/download/details.aspx?id=17657 
   Note: There isn’t a later version of the Resource Kit. Don’t worry about that if on 2008
   You just need the files INSTSRV.EXE and SRVANY.EXE from this kit
3. Install the Server Resource Kit or just copy the two files (INSTSRV and SRVANY) to:
   C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Resource Kits\Tools
   Note: You only need the two files mentioned. They can be in any folder – I’ve used the location from the default install. If you change the location, you’ll need to adjust those paths in a few spots.
4. Download Dropbox from: https://db.tt/82ZOShy 

Install and setup Dropbox

1. Install Dropbox as per normal
2. Select a folder for Dropbox to use – I prefer not to use the user folder for this, so create C:\Dropbox or add a Dropbox folder to your Data folder on the local system.
   You’ll set the Act! Scheduler to save the backups into this folder (or a sub-folder)
   
   
   
3. Open the Dropbox Preferences, by clicking on the icon in the SysTray, and turn off
   • Show desktop notifications
   • Start Dropbox on system startup
   
   
   
4. Exit Dropbox from the SysTray
   
   
   

Setting up the Service

1. There are two options here, depending on which Operating System you’re using:
   • If Windows 2003 or 2008,
     Open a command prompt, change directory to
     C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit\
     and type:
     instsrv Dropbox "c:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Resource Kits\Tools\srvany.exe"
     If it worked, you should get: The service was successfully added! .
   • If Windows 2008 R2, open an elevated command prompt (Run As Administrator) and type:
sc create Dropbox binPath= "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit\srvany.exe" DisplayName= "Dropbox Service"
If all ok, you’ll get: [SC] CreateService SUCCESS.
2. Next open the Services applet – Start > Run > services.msc
3. Scroll to the Dropbox item in the list. Right-click and select Properties
4. Switch to the “Log On” tab
5. Click “This account”, and enter an Admin account with Full Access to the Dropbox folder. Set the appropriate password for that account.
6. Click Apply
7. Switch back to the “General” tab
8. Change “Startup type” to Automatic
9. Click Apply and OK
10. If this is the first time you have done this procedure for the administrator user, you may get an notification saying that the “Administrator user has been granted log on as service rights”.
    DO NOT START THE SERVICE AT THIS TIME.
    
    
11. Next is to set up some registry settings for the service. Open the registry editor
    Start > Run > regedit
12. Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dropbox
13. Create a new key “Parameters”
14. Add a new string value “Application”, (type REG_SZ). Set the value to the path to the dropbox.exe binary.
    Find the location by right clicking the Dropbox icon on the desktop. Select Properties and copy the Target.
    .
    
15. Close the Registry Editor
16. Start the service either from Services.msc or by:
    Run > Net start Dropbox
17. If you check your Task Manager, you will find both Dropbox and srvany running
    Files saved by you or the Act! Scheduler to this folder should be automatically uploaded.

Important Notes and References

• If you want to make changes to the Dropbox preferences:
  You MUST stop the service first, make the changes, exit Dropbox and then restart the service
• These methods should also work with the desktop operating systems if you want to do this on XP, Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8.
• Reference from Microsoft on INSTSRV and SRVANY: How to Create a User-Defined Service
• Reference from Microsoft on: How to Create a Windows Service by Using SC.exe
• There are also some third-party tools that can be more stable in a production system. I haven’t tested them, but here are three I’ve found:
  • NSSM - http://nssm.cc/
  • SRVStart - http://rozanski.org.uk/software
  • AlwaysUp - http://www.coretechnologies.com/products/AlwaysUp/srvany.html
• You should regularly check the backups as I mentioned in my original article:
  Taking your Act! on Holiday

Please post in the comments if you have any questions.

 

Technorati Tags: Act!,Act! CRM,Backup,Dropbox,SaaS,Cloud,Service,Server

ACT! still a top 5 CRM <100 employees #ACTCRM

Now that the dust is starting to settle from the recent purchase of ACT! and SalesLogix from Sage, I was doing some research to see where ACT!’s standing is in the CRM market and came across some figures I thought worth sharing.

The first is from CRMswitch in their article: U.S. CRM Market Share 2013

ACT! is in 4th place in the 1-100 Employees demographic

I’m pretty certain that for sites of less than 50 seats, ACT! would be higher still – and more so under 25. I consider to be the “sweet-spot” for ACT! to be 10-25 users

Not only that, the article had ACT! in 6th place overall, which shows how big the SMB market is in comparison to the total.

 

As a nice point for Swiftpage, SalesLogix came in 5th overall giving them a combined total of 8.6% of the CRM market

Additionally, from the Gartner analysis Customer Relationship Management Software, Worldwide, 2012 (April 18th 2013), we can see that:

• Worldwide CRM market grew from $16Bm to $18Bn, experiencing 12% growth in 2012, three times the average of all enterprise software categories
• 40% of all CRM software sold in 2012 worldwide was SaaS-based. Gartner expects this figure to grow in the coming years

What this shows is that, while some outside the ACT! community see’s ACT! as somehow “old”, those who use it know that pound-for-pound, ACT! still packs a great punch … it’s very easy to use and is feature rich.

More so, it has expertise in some very core areas – from The History of ACT!, you can see it’s been available in the cloud since 1998 and on mobile devices since 1992. This gives ACT! the advantages of being:

• On-premises -  with the additional security, speed, integration and control
• Sync – for remote offices and laptops
• Mobile – with options for HTML5 or native add-on, Handheld Contact, for additional functionality
• Cloud – for simpler admin of remote users via public or private hosting

With Swiftpage saying that they’ll be using their web expertise to add a multitenant cloud version this should help ACT! grow as a product in this expanding market, and also to increase it’s market share.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments.

 

Technorati Tags: ACT!,ACTCRM,SaaS,CRM

SaaS/Cloud software and Regional Internet access

Regional road trips. No doubt you’ve, “been there, done that before” and experienced what a nightmare it can be to get any internet coverage. No matter what the reasons for our travels out of town may be, one thing is certain: We still need our connection to the big, busy world via our trusty iPhones or Blackberries – or in my case, both!

A short time ago, I had the pleasure of attending a friend’s birthday party on the Gold Coast of Queensland and spent 10 days there to catch up with some old friends.

I was based in Ormeau. For those who don’t know where this is, it is about 1 hour’s drive south of Brisbane (Australia’s third largest city) and is in Australian’s largest growing region.

I had a great time catching up with friends in Brisbane, Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast (North of Brisbane).

And of course, being me, I needed to have constant and regular access to my ACT! contacts, to email, and to various other office and on-line services and forums.

I was carrying an iPhone4 and a Blackberry Pearl (both with Handheld Contact) to give me the remote access I needed and hoped to find Wi-Fi connections where convenient to sync and to access my other information.

I suffered serious regional culture shock

Now don’t get me wrong. Like most people, I love getting out of town and escaping the hustle and bustle, but coming from Sydney, I’m used to the comforts of being connected at anytime of the day or night. I’m used to having a 30Mbit connection and 3G/4G network coverage. That’s not the reality though for my regional friends as I discovered while on my road trip. Here’s what I discovered on my travels:

• Mobile access was shocking: I had to wander from street to street, just to get a measly 1-2 bars on either the iPhone4 or Blackberry. As a customer of Telstra - this country’s largest telecommunications provider - it felt way short of my reasonable expectations for adequate coverage. It could have been worse – I could have had no coverage like any other poor person with the other carriers!
• Not all regional areas have ADSL coverage: Telstra has only put in enough lines for about half the properties in this new estate so the place where I was staying only got access after a neighbour moved out – the new resident in their neighbour’s place would be out of luck.

As frustrating as it was for me venturing out into this regional area...

...These frustrations are also being experienced in metropolitan areas of Australia!

There is “business park” in Brisbane itself (Australia’s third-largest capital city), that has virtually no broadband access at all …

Read that again if you need to, because the mind boggles. Even in a city like Brisbane, a business park doesn’t necessarily have broadband internet access. You can check out: Brisbane's NBN 'will transform people's lives' to get the lowdown on that story

For now though you might be wondering how this is relevant to this blog dedicated to Sage ACT!, CRM and IT?

Well, much in CRM is about mobility… and recently a lot of the press have jumped on the “trendy” technologies of cloud based computing – both for phone/tablet access and for general access.

For those of us who have been in the computing industry for long enough, we remember that the PC was originally viewed (by IBM) as little more than a slightly more intelligent “dumb terminal” to main-frame applications. Later, as the power of PCs increased, more of the data was stored locally and out of IT control. This lead to a gradual pull-back of control via networking, and then via various remote solutions.

These remote solutions are collectively referred to as “cloud computing”:

• ASP – Application Service Provider
• On-demand software
• SaaS – Software as a Service

To be honest, I’m not sure how to really define the differences of those … other than that they are buzz-words from different decades.

They are usually accessed via one or more of these methods:

• Remote Desktop Protocol Connection (Terminal Services or Citrix)
• Virtual Desktop (VMware, etc)
• Virtual Private Network
• Browser based applications

 

Cloud-based technologies do have some benefits:

• The data is live to the remote users
• Software integration issues are largely eliminated from the client side
• It can be platform independent – although, this can depend on browsers / versions that are supported
• Key software systems are kept up to date, available, and managed for performance by experts
• Improved reliability, availability, scalability and security of internal IT systems
• A provider's service level agreement should guarantee a certain level of service
• Access to product and technology experts dedicated to available products
• Reduction of internal IT costs to a predictable monthly fee
• Redeploying IT staff and tools to focus on strategic technology projects that impact the enterprise's bottom line

But there are also some serious disadvantages:

• The client must generally accept the application as provided since vendors only fully customize solutions for the largest clients
• The client may rely on the provider to provide a critical business function, thus limiting their control of that function and instead relying on the provider
• Changes in the market may result in changes in the type or level of service available to clients
• Integration with the client's non-hosted systems may be problematic
• Accessing data to convert to another system later maybe costly or not-available
• Loss of control of corporate data
• Loss of control of corporate image
• Insufficient vendor security to counter risks
• Lack of internet access (even temporarily) prevents users’ access to their data
• What happens when the provider suffers problems? Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Salesforce and many others have been in the press during the past year for being down for periods of time. Or some, like Google for losing data.

So where does that leave potential CRM users looking for remote access via the cloud?

I wrote an article a year ago on “Supporting Remote Users with ACT! by Sage”. In selecting the best method for a specific site, there are two questions you need to ask:

1. Will the master and remote users always have reliable connection when they need access? If not (especially in the case of regional access as per the beginning of this article), then you should look at a sync-solution. The users work off-line and sync the changes with the master
   This is especially important for smartphone and tablet users who may want to do work in areas not covered by their phone carrier or Wi-Fi (eg on a plane, some buildings and areas)
2. Do you have the necessary reliable bandwidth and access to IT skills to self host or do you get it hosted by a third-party for an on-going fee? This is a bit more complex and can depend on:
   • How good is your internet connection (for host and remote)?
   • How responsive are your support options (in-house or out-sourced) if the server has issues?
   • For hosted solutions:
     • How reliable are they?
     • How good is their tech support? Do they provide a service guarantee?
     • How financial are they?
     • What happens to your connection and data if their business or service fails?
   • If the third-party host is down for a day, how much will the loss of access cost you? Will it be less if the remote users are using sync to local copies?
   • How secure is the connection? At a minimum, must use one or more of SSL, VPN, RDP
   • If you want to change application, will the hosted provider allow you to access ALL of the data in a format suitable for importing into other systems?
   • How customisable is the application? Can you integrate it with your legacy systems or add functionality that you might require?

In Conclusion:

While SaaS/cloud offering will be suitable for many users, there are some questions that you need to ask to determine if it’s the best solution for you.

I feel certain that SaaS offerings will become more viable as time goes by, but right now I’m reminded of the line that for those on the bleeding edge of technology, that “a pioneer is frequently the guy with an arrow in his back!”

Technorati Tags: ACT,Sage,Sage ACT!,SaaS,Cloud,Remote,Smartphones,CRM,SageACT!

ACT! Fanatics LinkedIN Group 1000th member prize

The LinkedIN ACT! Fanatics Group was created as a place where ACT! users, resellers, add-on vendors and Sage staff from around the world could communicate and share their knowledge of using ACT! by Sage

The success of this is proven by the huge volume of valuable information that has been shared and now we are rapidly approaching 1000 members.

As a special present, some of the add-on vendors who are members of this group have offered to put together two packs of ACT! add-ons:

• One for the 1000th member to the group
• One for a random member of the group at the end of the week that the 1000th member joins
  To be eligible for this prize, you must post a reply to the News article referring to this offer in the LinkedIN group stating why you would like to use any of the add-on products in this promotion.
  The decision on the winner will be made by me in conjunction with the add-on vendors taking part

Both packs can be used by the winners or, if won by a reseller, Sage staff member or a user unable to use them, they can be sold at their retail values.*

The following products are included in both packs:

Handheld Contact – Professional Edition (1 yr)	Handheld Contact wirelessly syncs and manages your ACT! Contacts, Activities and Notes/Histories from your BlackBerry, Pocket PC, or Treo Smartphone - it's like having ACT! with you anywhere, anytime! *iPhone version now in beta and due soon
itDial – Advanced	Enhanced calling interface from ACT! via TAPI phone systems and/or Skype VoIP. itDial for ACT! makes keeping track of telephone calls easier than ever. Using  itDial, ACT! users can dial and answer calls, update contact information, add new contacts, create history, and schedule activities for incoming and outgoing calls with just the click of a mouse.
Company Wizard	Mass update and build company records based on a Lookup of Contact and create the contact links
Duplicate Contact Wizard - Expert	Powerful De-duplicating Contacts and Companies in your ACT! database while retaining the extended data (Notes, Histories, Activities, Attachments, etc).
ACT! E-marketing (6 months)	ACT! E-marketing helps you reach out to your contacts, grow your database, qualify new leads and automate your business processes. The offer will be 6 months of: Pro service level Silver Drip Marketing 1 user on the account 1,000 email per day send limit
Stonefield Query (6 months)	Stonefield Query for ACT!® is a user-friendly database report writing, query, and data mining tool designed specifically for ACT! putting Business Intelligence reporting in the hands of the end-user where it belongs. Stonefield Query has been customized specifically for ACT! giving you an intuitive, easy-to-use BI reporting solution that you will love!

* Option to resell does not apply to ACT! E-marketing or Stonefield Query

Technorati Tags: ACT,ACT! by Sage,CRM,Handheld Contact,Blackberry,iPhoney,PocketPC,LinkedIN

Should ACT! by Sage move into the “Cloud”?

There has been a lot of discussion about "cloud computing" or SaaS (Software as a Service) – even some by Sage management on the ACT! Community Leadership Blog. So I thought it would be a good topic to discuss

With most ACT! users who have modern Smartphones/PDAs now wanting wireless updates. The options for that either require the user to have web infrastructure or use an externally hosted sync server. As most ACT! users (other than Prem for Web) not having the systems and/or skills, those PDA links doing this are using the cloud and charging for the service.

Handheld Contact only offers subscription based, CompanionLink offers it as an option and Sage are looking at their own solution (ACT! Mobile Live)

In a recent discussion in the ACT! Fanatics Group, Sharon Randall of SJR said she, and many of her users, prefer CompanionLink because it's a one-off purchase. Ignoring other feature differences to HHC, this also means it is only a connected cable sync - no updates on the road. It's also the primary reason I've seen when users pick CL over HHC.

This is also one reason a user might choose ACT! over SalesForce. There are many others, but this is a core difference.

But, at the same time, there are users starting to ask for more cloud options from ACT! – and there certainly has been movement in that direction, at least with a deal Sage Australia did with a local host.
See comments below http://blog.glcomputing.com.au/2009/11/supporting-remote-users-with-act-by.html

The ability to share remotely means cloud is nearly always the better option for users with PDAs - except for the single user who isn't sharing their data. But what about other functions? Or even ACT! itself?

I also have a personal interest in your opinions on this... our soon to be released Accounts Master! (to integrate with accounting software like QuickBooks) will also use a subscription model. We did this because:

• It will work for users where the accounts staff don't use ACT! and ACT! users don't have access to accounts – It will even work with Web versions, Sync users, Term Services and hosted.
• It means we don't have to explain to users who upgrade ACT! and then get upset that they have to also pay for their add-ons to be upgraded - it does take work to accommodate changes with each new version of ACT!
• We can roll out enhancements when they are ready, rather than having to wait till we have enough to justify an upgrade fee or having to really a build with bugs to meet a marketing timeframe - this is something I really like about Handheld Contact 

So... after all this: What do you think about cloud/subscription Vs purchase/upgrade?

• With some users wanting Cloud and others resisting, which camp are most ACT! users in now?
• Will this change over then next year or two?
• Should Sage wait for the ACT! user-base to demand this as they mature (if this is the future) or should they lead?
• If Sage moves to early, it may upset some users... but will it upset enough that it's a worry?
• Might this be an issue in some areas in the world where internet access, reliability and speeds are not as good?

Alternatively, without the cloud, how would users feel to a subscription model for ACT! in their own office - an annual license key and has to be renewed, but includes upgrades? I guess this is like Upgrade Insurance

For ACT! resellers, I've asked a follow-up in the ACT! Resellers Group on LinkedIN

I’d appreciate any thoughts or comments you might have. Thanks.

Update:

For those looking at a SaaS offering for ACT! by Sage now, see http://glcomputing.actondemand.com/

 

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