ACT! 2010- purchase now, or wait for new release?

Nate

The 2004 version is missing a lot of usability and productivity improvements that are found in the last two versions - 2010 and the recently released 2011. The biggest benefits our clients have used in the later versions are:

1. Management dashboards - the ability to see what is going on in the business: Sales reps scheduled activities, opportunities by stage, forecasted revenue, close sales from won opportunities. We have sales reps that don't need to do call reports because their historical activity is readily viewable anytime by the sales manager.

2. Near seamless integration with Outlook Email, Contacts and Calendar. Lots of options to customize the way your business works. Big boost in productivity and having those precious emails within ACT and linked to the contact for future reference

3. Opportunity management: Provide a structured sales process with stages and probabilities to measure the value of sales opportunities

4. Integrated emarketing for staying top of mind: For example, send out an email newsletter to a group of contacts, observe who is opening/clicking on links, get a hot/warm/cold call list to sales people, measure campaigns results. And have all of that contact history found and linked to each contact- making your CRM system a knowledge asset.

5. Automated workflow (Smart tasks) found in Sage ACT! 2011. Get more done with less people. More info found here: http://www.successwithcrm.com/sage-act-2011/

6. Using more current and stable backend database (SQL 2008 Express for remotes). Windows vista and 7 compatible. Office 2010 compatible.

7. Integration with accounting systems. In particular our clients love the ability to see open invoices, aging balances and contact synch with Quick books and ACT

8. Misc. items: Ability to view information from social media links to per contact: view a contact's LinkedIN, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc information. Perform a Google map view or Google search that shows results within ACT itself. More customization capability to extend the schema to track what you need to track. Integrations with the latest mobile smart phones.

As Sage ACT! certified consultants we help support business people get more from business relationship development and using ACT contact management tools. We provide conversion, upgrade, implementation, training and support.

Please visit our main Success with CRM ACT web site at:

http://www.successwithcrm.com/success-with-act/

Nate,
Adding to the excellent points that Josh and Dick have covered:

Be aware that there are some conditions when "converting automatically" will probably fail. Illegal characters in field names ("#, %, &, etc.), recurring activities that exceed five years, a large number of uncleared activities, and database corruption are high on that list. If you're aware of landmines before converting and take the measures needed to prepare the database, yes, it's automatic.

If your database has had little or no customization, and/or users don't use recurring activities (and clear activities when completed), and/or the database has had regular database maintenance performed, then success in converting is much more likely. Definitely perform database maintenance before you attempt it, though (FileAdministration Database Maintenance Compress and Reindex).

There are additional diagnostics and prep work a consultant could do for you so if you have any concerns about data viability, you might want to reach out to an ACT! Certified Consultant, as Dick mentioned.

As for 2004 vs. 2011: The capabilities of the two versions are profoundly different, and so is the program’s back-end. As a result, your system will require more resources, so be sure that you have sufficient RAM and processing speed as well. You can find Sage’s system specs at http://bit.ly/9A4wmJ. We think that real-word requirements often demand more, so we provide an adjusted version here http://bit.ly/aYDv7b .

There are a few more improvements that didn't make the above list that should also be considered:

1. A couple of versions ago, ACT! introduced custom tables. This means ACT! has the capability of what are called one-to-many relationships. This is helpful to track things for any number of business requirements, such as service contracts or policy types and their renewal dates, equipment serial numbers, or any other "list" sort of items to track.

2. Sage Info Business Services powered by Hoover's (SBISA), is an integrated service that helps you learn more about your existing customers and helps find leads to import into ACT!. It offers three service levels, starting at free.

Some of the new features I love are the ones that users have been requesting forever:

1. Filtering history by type. Now you decide exactly which histories you want to display and can filter out those annoying housekeeping ones like “Field Changed” or “Contact Deleted.”

2. Importing from Excel format files. Yay! At last!

3. Security for Email History that prevents histories being added to ACT! user records – this is a big deal for companies with a lot of internal email communications that contain confidential information.

No matter how you use ACT!, at this point you do need to replace such an obsolete version. That said, this new release is working out the initial bugs that accompany any software release. That said, the issues only matter if they impact how you plan to use the application. Just make sure to use a build (regular hot fixes are released to fix stuff) that does what you need it to, even if that means waiting a few more weeks. In the meantime, continue with your due diligence, and good luck!

PS: We created a fun video about the upgrade. Enjoy it at http://bit.ly/96d2UF

Nate, in addition to the great points that have been suggested, if your goal is to truly leverage ACT! to grow your business, I would encourage you to look into getting some training on ACT! 2011. So very much has changed since ACT! 2004, it would be a shame if you didn't learn how to take advantage of the wealth of productivity available in ACT! 2011. If you like manuals, look at the ACT! Quick Study Guide at http://tinyurl.com/3y4h5sn. If you work better with an instructor, then Google "ACT! Training" and explore the options of classroom or internet based ACT! training provided by an ACT! Certified Consultant or ACT! Premier Trainer. Your training will be well worth the investment.

Thank you all for your responses, it is very much appreciated. It is nice to see that everyone is pretty much agreed on the upgrade. Thanks again!