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Software SnapShot ACT!
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Best Software, CRM Division 8800 North Gainey Center Drive, Suite 200 Scottsdale, AZ 85258
In 1975, two neighbors—Pat Sullivan and Mike Muhney—got together and did what successful salespeople do: compared notes. As “power” Day-Timer users, they were successfully tracking their commitments to clients. They were building high-level corporate relationships and managing them effectively. They were doing everything right. But, as the years passed, they wanted to do more. After all, doing more meant selling more. But with little or no administrative assistance—one of the “occupational hazards” of salespeople—their hands were tied. They didn’t stop there, however. Sullivan and Muhney firmly believed that with the right tools, they could sell more. And, with desktop PCs coming into fashion, they believed there was a “computerized” way to be more productive. But none of the “productivity” packages they tried measured up to their paper-based systems. Eventually, they formed a company called Conductor Software and adapted Lotus Symphony into their own quote and proposal manager. The predecessor to the present-day configurator, Quote Pro was only mildly successful. So with little of their initial investment remaining, Sullivan and Muhney quickly introduced Sales Conductor—and bombed. With no money and two failed products, Sullivan and Muhney were at a crossroads. Then, a long, arduous meeting on July 4, 1986 sealed their fates. Contact Software International was born and just nine months later, ACT! 1.0 stormed the marketplace. As Muhney later said, “it took six years to become an overnight success.” Contact Software International was a genuine pioneer in the contact management software industry. But in 1993, after successfully building ACT! into one the most popular business software, Contact Software was acquired by Symantec Corporation. Sullivan went on to found SalesLogix Corporation—a company devoted to performance-boosting sales automation solutions for sales managers and salespeople—in January 1996. In just three years, the product not only dominated the mid-market, but it evolved from a high-end contact manager into a fully-integrated customer relationship management suite offering sales, marketing, support, and e-business solutions. Then, on December 6, 1999, SalesLogix Corporation announced a new venture: it re-acquired ACT! and launched Interact.com—the only online service that integrates sales-related Internet services right into the applications that salespeople use most. To reflect the new, multi-brand offering, the company changed its name to Interact Commerce Corporation on April 26, 2000. “Our new name reflects this expansion in our vision to reach a broader marketplace with relationship management and selling solutions, helping us communicate that we are providing companies with exactly the products that help them meet their individual business needs,” Sullivan said. Today, Interact Commerce Corporation continues a tradition begun with Sullivan and Muhney—that of truly understanding salespeople. It’s what made ACT! successful. It’s what made SalesLogix successful. Designed with salespeople in mind, Interact Commerce solutions pave the way for interactive selling. Interact Commerce Corporation is the leading provider of relationship management software for mid-market companies and small-office/home-office businesses. We’re known for building products that are easy to use, quick to deploy, and provide anytime, anywhere access to critical information. Our products include SalesLogix®, the mid-market CRM leader (customer relationship management) used by over 3,500 companies; and ACT!™, the best-selling contact manager used by more than 3.2 million professionals and 11,000 corporations. In a world where customers can switch brands at the click of a mouse, cultivating and caring for customers is more critical — and more difficult — than ever before. Traditional CRM-only solutions focus squarely on the front office. We believe the key to attracting and retaining customers is through an open architecture that interconnects the front office, the back office, and the Internet (or web office). Our open architecture enables companies to build cohesive, complete customer histories that can be shared across departments and geographies. Regardless of whether you choose SalesLogix or ACT!, you can expect from Interact Commerce: Solutions designed to maximize your selling time. Easy-to-use features “think” just like a salesperson so you don’t have to re-learn something to use it. Simple navigational commands present key selling and customer information in a single view. Solutions that get you up and running fast. No matter what, your business has to keep running. Bringing it down for even a day or two to install software costs you money. With significant out-of-the-box functionality and industry standard technologies, you’ll get a faster return on investment than other solutions provide. Solutions that you can access anytime, anywhere. Whether you access customer information through a standalone computer, a network, the Internet, handheld PCs, or wireless technology, we provide you with 24x7 real-time capabilities so you can do business when — and how — it suits you. Solutions that are flexible enough to work the way you do. Flexible architectures and tools give you the option to customize exactly to your selling process and your business. On March 27, 2001 Interact Commerce Corporation (Nasdaq: IACT), announced a definitive merger agreement with The Sage Group plc, a leading worldwide supplier of business management solutions and services for small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs). The all-cash offer, structured at $12 per share of Interact Commerce, is valued at approximately $263 million. Interact Commerce will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Sage Group plc. “The combination of Interact and Sage will create a global force in the software industry,” said Pat Sullivan, chairman and CEO of Interact Commerce Corporation. “Sage is the world’s leading supplier of back-office business management solutions to small and medium-sized enterprises. Combined, we have the resources and technology to impact this market from a position of tremendous strength by offering a truly integrated suite of applications for the front office, back office, and web office.” “Both our organizations understand the unique needs of small and mid-sized customers and believe the best way to reach and support these customers is through a reseller channel. This was very important in our decision to merge with Sage. I believe this is an exciting development for our business partners, customers, and employees,” added Sullivan. Paul Walker, Sage’s Chief Executive commented, “This acquisition gives us a strong position in the CRM market and represents a significant opportunity to sell additional products and services to Sage’s 2.5 million customers worldwide. It also opens up additional markets for Interact’s products in new and existing geographies. While penetration of CRM software amongst Sage customers is currently estimated at less than 10%, our research suggests that demand is already high and is likely to grow significantly over the next few years.” Walker continued, “Interact’s CEO and founder, Pat Sullivan, has a wealth of CRM experience and is a highly respected figure within the industry. Over the past few years, Pat Sullivan has built up a professional management team at Interact and this team will remain in place post-acquisition to effect Sage’s strategic plans for the future development of Interact’s business.”
About The Sage Group plc Further details on the financial condition of the company and total installed base are included in our complete In-Depth Review. Product: ACT!
ACT!TM, the best-selling contact manager from Best Software, today announced the availability of ACT! version 6.0. This newest version represents ACT!’s most comprehensive contact management product released yet. With over 50 new features, ACT! 6.0 is an upgrade for all previous users of ACT! for Windows. The primary focus of this new release is a completely new e-mail client and advanced integration with Microsoft Outlook®. “Our customer surveys have told us that our users spend an average of six hours a day in ACT! With ACT! being such an essential part of our users’ workday, it was critical that with ACT! 6.0, we enabled integration with the tools our customers use on a daily basis such as e-mail, Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat and the Internet,” said Greg Head, general manager of ACT!, Best Software. “In addition, over the last year we have announced new products that enable integration with PDAs and accounting products such as QuickBooks Pro/Premier and Peachtree Accounting. By providing integration between ACT! contact data and other applications and devices, we are giving our customers the ability to leverage contact management to its fullest and benefit from having all of the data they need linked to the relevant contact record.” The ACT! 6.0 e-mail client has been completely upgraded. Users can use the new ACT! e-mail as a standalone client or integrate with and view Outlook, Outlook Express, SMTP/POP3 (Internet Mail) and Lotus Notes e-mail folders from within ACT!. Users can set up multiple accounts and view them all from within ACT!. Because tracking the history of e-mail correspondence is a critical part of contact management, there are three history options that are available when sending e-mail from either ACT! e-mail or Outlook. In addition to traditional e-mail history options such as including the subject line only in the notes section or attaching the full e-mail to the contact record, users now have the option to attach the subject plus the text of the message in the notes section. This option is especially useful to corporate customers with large workgroups working from a single database. Additional new e-mail features include the ability to send and receive HTML e-mails from within ACT!, the ability to instantly add new contacts to any ACT! database, and the ability to access both ACT! and Outlook address books, regardless of the application in which the user is currently working. In addition to the new e-mail client and Outlook integration, a full list of new features may be found at www.act.com/upgrade. However, highlights of ACT! 6.0 include: Active Libraries- From the Library Tab, users can directly attach Microsoft Word/Excel/PowerPoint/MapPoint documents, Adobe Acrobat documents (PDF), JPG files and BMP files to the contact record and view them from within that contact record, without launching a separate application. In addition, these documents can be edited from that view using all of the native Microsoft Office toolbars and then saved or printed. Excel Integration-Using an Excel document that has been attached to the Library Tab, users can map fields from their database to fields in Excel for simple and efficient quoting. One quote sheet template can easily be attached to all the contacts in the database for quick updating and quote generation. Contact Activity Look-ups-This data mining feature enables users to gain insight into the customers and activities in their database with a just a few clicks. Users can perform a contact activity look-up to uncover which customers they have contacted recently, as well as which ones have not been contacted in a specified time frame. From the look-up they can schedule follow-up activities, send an e-mail or derive a call list. Annual Event Tracking-Another data mining feature, Annual Event Tracking enables users to specify any date fields in their database as annual events. By doing this, users can manage their events such as birthdays, anniversaries, and policy renewals with a simple annual event look-up. This gives users advance notice of the event so they have time to react appropriately, such as sending a birthday greeting in advance of the event date. Enhanced Internet Services-Now, users can access Web sites from within ACT! using the built-in Internet Browser and attach relevant Web pages to one or more contacts. The pages are saved as offline Web pages so users can access the information even when they are not connected, or when the page is no longer available online. HTML E-mail Templates-ACT! 6.0 ships with 10 HTML e-mail templates for everything from birthdays to e-newsletters to order confirmations. Using the new mail-merge wizard users can correspond with their customers in a professional and efficient manner. “Active Libraries is a great example of how ACT! 6.0 allows us to multi-task programs without having to go back and forth between two or three. The fact that ACT! integrates with all of the tools my team uses every day and that these tools can all be accessed without ever leaving ACT! is what makes it invaluable to us. There isn’t anything you can’t do with it!,” said Hartmann. Current and new users can get up and running with ACT! 6.0 in a matter of minutes. Current users simply install ACT! 6.0 and previous databases will be converted seamlessly to work with ACT! 6.0. ACT! 6.0 is available now in North America with a suggested retail price of $199.95US. ACT! 6.0 can be purchased at software retailers including CompUSA, Staples, BestBuy, Office Dept, Micro Center, Fry’s, CDW, and Circuit City. For existing ACT! users purchasing from retail, there is a $70.00US mail-in upgrade rebate. In addition, ACT! 6.0 can be purchased directly from ACT! with new user pricing of $199.95US and $99.95 for existing users upgrading to ACT! 6.0. For more information or to order, please call 877-386-8083 (US and Canada only) Monday through Friday, 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific Time or visit www.act.com/estore. Volume licensing is also available for companies wanting 10 licenses or more by calling 1-888-855-5222. ACT! will be available in the United Kingdom and the Asia Pacific region in early October. Complete details on pricing are included in our complete In-Depth Review. This program is best suited for the solo sales professional or small sales teams (less than 20 users) who interact over a local area network. The program provides modest customization capabilities. However, this is shortcoming is offset by ACT!’s ease of use. This is a great starter CRM solution for almost any small business or small sales team. The program does a great job of the following:
The program does an acceptable job of the following:
The program needs improvement in the following:
Order In-Depth Review: V437 Price: $47.00 This review covers version 5.04 and is 75 pages long. The last updates were made in March 2002. Note: A complete update of our review for the new version 6.0 is underway at this time. It should be ready real soon now! If you want to be on my waiting list for this new review, just send me an email: richbohn@sellmorenow.com
If you are considering this program, you should also look at these programs:
Rich's Recommended Web Sites
Best selling author Jeffrey Mayer's web site for dispensing great ACT! advice. Rich's Recommended Reading List
Copyright © 2002 by The Denali Group, Inc. (www.sellmorenow.com) |
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