Larry Ritter's Development Blog

Re: International ACT! and v12.1

dflood — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:40:06 GMT

Hi Larry, I have found the Web Info tab to be a real improvement in ACT! 2010.

I had a recent personal experience of receiving a sales lead that came in via email. The only information available was the name of the contact and a mobile phone number. Normally, I would have my support staff ring and qualify the lead first and then book a call for me from there. As it was late afternoon this wouldn't have happened until at least the next morning.

However, after entering the basic information that I had into ACT! I thought I would just see if there was anyting on the Web about this particular contact. They had an unusual surname so I thought I would see what the Google searches turned up. Using the options in the Webinfo tab I found a link that identified this contact as being the owner of a very large organisation in our region. This was enough info for me to 'qualify' them as someone I should ring immediately. Which I did.

As it turned out, that was worth doing. We have just successfully completed the implementation for that large project. Whilst I couldn't say that using the Web Info tab won me the business it could well have saved it for me. Like a lot of businesses we have competition and people making enquiries may well ring the next company in the Google search if the first company they rang isn't available to assist.

Hopefully, by being the first person to get back and be of assistance there isn't a lot of need for them to look further afield.

Being able to use Web Info to qualify in-coming sales leads is just one benefit of the web info tab.

I have done a Youtube video of the web info tab that I show to clients for anyone interested in seeing how this feature works. http://bit.ly/cThG4K

Cheers, Darren.

International ACT! and v12.1

larryr — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:52:10 GMT

Hello everyone,

I have been travelling of late and recently attended the Gartner CRM Event in London. While this event is primarily focused on CRM it was great to hear Michael Dunne, Gartner Analyst, say something really important and true about ACT!. In one session he was explaining the various vendors in the Sales Force Automation segment of the CRM space. As he was summarizing vendors he pointed out that of all the vendors the largest user base was ACT! with somewhere over 3 Million users. He attributed this to personalization, ease of use and familiarity by Sales individuals and professionals. I already knew this but it’s good hear from others and interesting to watch people’s reaction when they hear such statistics about ACT! People always seem illuminated but not surprised by this fact. I appreciate Michael highlighting this point. Another really interesting insight from the conference was the focus on how to get more internet and social media connected experience into an organization’s selling activities – since ACT! 2010 (v12.0), introduced in September 2009, we have had the Web Info tab. This feature brings rich contextual awareness of specific websites and services directly into ACT! This has been a really fun, innovative and highly practical ACT! features.

It’s also really exciting to have ACT! 12.1 in market. This in-line release for ACT! 2010 (v12.0) retires a number of in market topics that have been reported by customers. This release also includes feedback provided by our community. As you know, we have the Ideas Exchange section of this community http://community.act.com/sage/?category.id=ideas. We have hundreds of suggestions and all are taken seriously – in fact it’s a very important tool as we plan future releases. In v12.1 the team has incorporated about 50 ideas contributed by you in this forum. This is the kind of closed loop, hear the voice of our customer interaction that helps us help each other to keep ACT! aligned with what you need.

If you have any interesting examples of how you have used the Web Info Tab I would love to hear from you. I always find the best examples of use come directly from our customers like you.

Thanks for being a member of our community and keep those ideas coming!

Larry

Re: The direction of ACT!

alex@gemfind.com — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:13:18 GMT

I am having a problem whit my ACT 7.0 Ver 9. when i try to run a mail merge, it give me an error:

"exception has been thrown by the target of invocation"

can anyone help? i woould be greatful if anyone had soluion to this problem..

Alex

ACT! Coverage, Services, Training and Localized ACT! – Welcome Quebec!

larryr — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 17:48:41 GMT

It’s hard to believe we’re 2 + weeks into the new year. Lot’s going on in the ACT! world already in 2010. First, you may be aware of Paul Greenberg – He is the well decorated author of “CRM at the Speed of Light” and recently published the 4^th Edition. Paul has also taken notice of ACT! 2010 and has makes very favorable comments about ACT! and Sage here: http://blogs.zdnet.com/crm/?p=1346&tag=col1;post-1346. Last week, we had discussion and a feedback session directly between Paul and our development team, we’re busily considering his enlightened thoughts.

We’ve talked about connected services in previous posts. ACT! E-Marketing is our first and was launched with ACT! 2010. The results to date have been above expectations – customers are benefiting from the free trial to experiment with sending, monitoring and measuring their email campaigns. We’ve also had excellent velocity of subscriptions and we see the popularity of this new “feature as a service” continuing to grow. If you haven’t already, check out our E-Marketing webinar on February 3. http://inter.viewcentral.com/events/cust/search_results.aspx?cid=best&pid=2&lid=2&tstamp=1264265441020&event_id=1147&postingForm=catalog.aspx.

Stay tuned for our next service - ACT! Mobile Live which is coming soon. Just this past week, after about 20 minutes of set-up I now have my Blackberry and ACT! wirelessly syncing my 800 + contacts and very busy calendar. I really enjoyed how easy and fast it was to set up and begin using.

We realize ACT! is very powerful and the more you know the more amazing things you can do. We’ve introduced the ACT! Essential Training Library which includes more than 35 videos, representing more than 4 hours of self-paced anytime learning. This is new and worth checking out. http://www.sageu.com/act/vc.html?inter.viewcentral.com/Events/cust/search_results.aspx?cid=sage&pid=1&lid=260&bu_id=11&event_address_id=164.

Our localized releases are just being completed and we welcome ACT! 2010 in German and French. We’ve taken extra steps to bring ACT! to our friends in French speaking Canada, especially Quebec. We’ve got some great CC’s up there and many eager customers.

Last, this community continues to grow. We have more than 15,000 members and another 2,000 plus members in our connections on Twitter, Linked-In, Facebook, etc. It’s great to see the interactions you have with each other and the overall information flow. Regards, Larry

ACT! 2010, What’s Next, Chicago Town Hall…

larryr — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:52:05 GMT

Time is flying and it’s hard to believe ACT! 2010 (English) has been in market now for 2 months! The feedback and reception has been fantastic. The media interviews, overall coverage and excitement exceeded my expectations in quantity and depth.

Re: ACT! by Sage 2010 is HERE!

budw — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:33:17 GMT

I've been an ACT user for over 10 years...just upgraded to 2010 from 2008...

When will the performance issues be fixed in 2010? 8 seconds to change records or go from the calendar to the contact isn't acceptable...also, why do I have to keep restarting SQL Server?

Outlook integration is a LOT better...

I run my business on ACT...I miss the performance I had in v10.

Re: ACT! by Sage 2010 is HERE!

larryr — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 15:42:47 GMT

Hi djonespcedc,

Thanks for this.. I can see you want the flexibility of the web but need it packaged for a business of your size and budget - that's something we at Sage very much want to provide. One option I recommend is to check out our Hosting options. We have a number of specialized partners that provide ACT! Premium for Web on a hosted basis for ACT! customers. They provide a range of services and payment styles to deliver a service and buying experience to fit various needs. These partners are existing ACT! Partners but provide this specialized hosting service in addition. Here is the link form act.com, I suggest you check out a couple of these providers. I believe one or more of them can help you. Larry

http://www.act.com/partners/hosting/directory/

Re: ACT! by Sage 2010 is HERE!

djonespcedc — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:31:34 GMT

I have a question. We are a small, nonprofit office with four users. We would like the ability to access our ACT databases on the web. The only product I see that has that capability is the corporate version, which is cost prohibitive. Do you have any other options for small nonprofits groups?

Re: ACT! by Sage 2010 is HERE!

larryr — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:03:14 GMT

Thanks for the post and yes, I am concerned about the post as we very much want all users to have a simple and positive trial experience. I did a little research today and here is what is happening.

ACT! uses Microsoft SQL as it's database and with the trial we include SQL 2005 SP3. When installing on a users machine, if SQL 2005 is already present we skip the installation of SQL to reduce overall installation time. If SQL 2005 is not present, we install SQL 2005 SP3 as part of the ACT! install. We have come to learn, there is an incompatibility between Microsoft SQL 2005 SP3 and Windows XP SP2 that causes a blue screen during installation. We have brought this condition to Microsoft's attention and they have delivered a hotfix to Windows XP SP2 that corrects this problem. We have asked Microsoft for permission to distribute this hot fix to minimize the occurrence of this incompatibility between Microsoft products - they have declined. Microsoft does make the Hot Fix available to Windows XP customer from their support teams.

From an ACT! perspective we want users to proceed with the trial. Here are 2 methods that should help get past the problem of installing an ACT! 2010 trial on a Windows XP SP2 machine. Either should get you up and running:

1) Contact Microsoft Support and ask for the Windows XP SP2 Hot Fix to correct the SQL 2005 SP3/Windows XP SP 2 install incompatibility

2) Update your Windows XP Operating System to SP3, this is available via Windows Update.

After completing 1) or 2) ACT! should fully and correctly install on your Windows XP PC. We are in process of upgrading our system requirements to state Windows XP SP3 is required. This will be reflected on our website shortly.

I am very sorry for this inconvenience and hope this helps. Larry

Re: ACT! by Sage 2010 is HERE!

TrialUser555 — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:58:16 GMT

Hi Larry-

Are you at all concerned by this thread ( http://community.act.com/sage/board/message?board.id=ACT&thread.id=28615 )regarding the posted systems requirements for the Act2010 trial?

The system requirements here ( http://www.act.com/2010/system/act/ ) state that Windows XP(SP2) is sufficient to run the application. But the version of SQL Server Express bundled with the trial causes XP SP2 users' machines to bluescreen and there is no hotfix for SP2.

Is there any reason why you are unwilling to modify the posted systems requirements to reflect that SP3 is required to run Act2010?

Re: The direction of ACT!

Big Red — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:15:14 GMT

I am trying to run a phone list report in ACT 9 (Premium) that includes Secondary Contact names and phone numbers with company alomng with the primary. It doesn't seem possible or is it?

Re: ACT! by Sage 2010 is HERE!

rodolfoi — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:31:47 GMT

Larry,

Congratulations on connecting to twitter and face book. I guess that makes ACT cool.

It would be nice thought to make the basics work first. Having access to social networks is a double edged sword. Specially if your product is declining in quality.

I've been using act for many years. Before it was purchased by Sage. Some time ago I purchased Act 09 - Version 11.1.183.0 with the Hotfix 1. The basics have been negatively impacted, I must say. (One should not forget, this is at the core a contact and schedule manager) - Walk first. Marketing tools are useless if you cant schedule a follow up with a customer in less than 200 clicks.

Here are the first 3 problems in a pretty long list. (all free of charge from yours truly. I don't charge for product testing. Heck, I even pay for the products I'm suffertesting):

1 - This is VERY slow. Its obvious that the database was changed, but the implementation.....

2 - Many problems with the basics. Try to schedule a follow up to an activity for say.... next week on Tuesday. There is no way to know that you have already scheduled for that day. You know there is something scheduled for 2 PM but you don't know if you have to feed the fish or meet with your biggest client.

Called support, etc,etc,etc.(they tried to charge me!!!! LOL) They realized this is a design flaw (it does not even qualify as a bug), told me they would get back to me. Two months +/- have passed. Maybe its a really big problem. Or maybe no one cares. What do you think?

3- Outlook integration.... still not there.

Have many more issues, but lets see if anyone cares about these first.

So, facebook, Linked in and twitter are nice (I guess), but what about the basics? God help us if all these wonderful marketing tools (don't know if they work) get us more customers. We might loose them because we can't properly schedule follow up activities with them!!

ACT! by Sage 2010 is HERE!

larryr — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:36:04 GMT

ACT! 2010 (English) is now available for customer delivery in North America! We officially released the gold files yesterday— check out our video of ACT! 2010 literally going "out the door"!

If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know that I’ve been discussing this significant release for the last several weeks, and now it’s finally here.

From a development perspective, I am very proud of this release for several reasons. The new ACT! 2010 release includes a wealth of new feature innovations, usability enhancements that make it even easier to learn and use, and technology that improves our ability to provide timely software updates. A sample of the new features includes:

New Look: Easier to navigate and better discoverability to quickly accomplish tasks.
Improved and New reports: More than a dozen new reports, plus a handy favorite’s area.
Social Media: Track contacts and be better informed with turnkey integration to leading sites, plus you can quickly and easily add your own sites.
ACT! E-Marketing: An optional service that helps you better understand your contacts by knowing who is opening and clicking through your e-mail campaigns. Drip campaigns make it easy to set up multi-stage campaigns. And, automated call lists that point out your hottest prospects.
Customizable Opportunities: Tune your opportunities to precisely fit your business.
Improved Dashboards: 12 new components and 2 new Dashboards. Know in seconds what contacts are newly created and recently changed, and more….

To prepare for the launch, I was in New York and Boston last week introducing ACT! 2010 to Journalists and Analysts. Given the strength of the feature set, my job was pretty easy, and a lot fun. Many commented that the capabilities in ACT! 2010 either don’t exist in products costing much more and/or the level of integration and ease of use in ACT! is superior. I look forward to lots of positive coverage over the coming weeks.

While in Boston, I also met with a number of our local ACT! Certified Consultants. They were really stoked about ACT! 2010, so we captured a couple of impromptu videos:

Karen Rankin, Actability

Joe Norcott, Business Technologies of New England

See ACT! 2010 for yourself.

View our social media release.

That’s it for now. Enjoy the new ACT!

Larry

Message Edited by larryr on 09-01-2009 06:38 AM

Get Social With ACT!

larryr — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:02:43 GMT

Get Social With ACT!

We’ve had a number of articles about how social media and ACT! are very complementary. From beta, a number of you have made comments about how cool the “web info” tab is in ACT! 2010. This is a very easy and helpful way for ACT! users to quickly navigate the social media space. In support of our initiatives in social media we’ve formed a number of groups at the leading social media sites. I encourage each of you, and a friend to join one or more of the following groups:

Twitter - www.act.com/twitter

LinkedIn - www.act.com/linkedin

Facebook - www.act.com/facebook

Plaxo - www.act.com/plaxo

YouTube - www.act.com/youtube

MySpace - www.act.com/myspace

When you join these groups, you will have easy access and a place to share information about ACT!. In fact, I just noticed a very interesting article from Forrester on how ACT! has been successful in using Social Media. This fall, look for a number of additional webinars, whitepapers and news articles from Sage on how ACT! and Social Media are a natural fit.

Looking forward to seeing you many of you in the groups above. Why not join right now? ACT! is all about community!

Larry

Re: Check it out - ACT! 2010 Coming Soon!

pmonish — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:54:08 GMT

Larry,

I have been trying to understand why, with all the input you receive on ways to improve ACT, by adding and modifying certain things, you have not done them yet . (Simple fixes to improve the experience)!

I have been using ACT since 1.1 in 1987 and have also been speaking with other ACT Consultants about these improvments yet you have not address them or even have a web conference with the elders to discuss these issues..

When can we expect to hear from you?

pmonish@comcast.net.

New Jersey

Take a Test Drive of ACT! 2010

larryr — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 22:18:07 GMT

Take a Test Drive of ACT! 2010, See the New User Experience

The ACT! 2010 beta period has ended and our Development team is now heads down in the final “closedown” phase as we near release. I’m pleased to report the final feedback continues to be very positive.

Early bird sales are in full swing and we now have an on-line test drive so you can get a hands-on feel for the upcoming release. Check out the following links:

Early Bird Sales

Take a Test Drive

Whether you are a new or experienced ACT! user, notice the fresh user interface. With more than 2.8 million users, ACT! is all about being productive on the tasks performed every day. Early in the ACT! 2010 development we conducted a number of studies and interviews to better understand common tasks and get feedback on how to streamline. We received great input from our Customer Advisory Board, Certified Consultants, existing ACT! customers and people not using ACT!. This feedback was incredibly helpful to improve the navigation, make features easier to discover, streamline tasks, suggest related tasks and more. We also benchmarked a number of tasks comparing ACT! 2010, previous versions of ACT! and competitive products. ACT! 2010’s navigation fared very well in these tests and look for whitepapers providing greater explanation and detail after launch.

The sites referenced above are intended for North American customers. If you live outside of North America, please contact Sage locally for specific ACT! 2010 plans offers in your region.

Regards, Larry

Message Edited by tmergel on 09-08-2009 10:15 AM

Check it out - ACT! 2010 Coming Soon!

larryr — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:05:34 GMT

A couple of events signal an exciting time of year for ACT!. One is when beta for the next release begins and another when Early Bird sales begin. Beta started on June 30 and Early Bird Sales started yesterday - July 14! Here’s an update on both.

I have been especially excited about ACT! 2010 since we previewed the release with our ACT! Certified Consultants (ACC’s) in May at the Sage Insights Conference. The reviews from this group of ACT! specialists were nothing short of phenomenal. The ACC’s were impressed by the thought that went into ACT! 2010 - from usability tests which guided changes in navigation to the range of high impact new features - they were anxious to start talking about ACT! 2010 right away!

Beta feedback has been equally positive. Last week we held focused “Beta Day” events with groups of ACC’s in several cities across the United States. We received excellent feedback from this highly energized group of special participants. The broader end-user Beta is also going well. Less than 2 weeks into the program we are oversubscribed and have more than 1400 posts to the ACT! 2010 Beta Newsgroup. To our Beta users, we ask quantitative and qualitative questions as part of “homework” surveys. Here is a sample of questions and top 2 box responses (5 boxes – Very satisfied, Somewhat satisfied, Neutral, Somewhat dissatisfied, Dissatisfied) from the survey as of July 14:

Overall, how would you rate your product experience with this beta version of ACT!? 83% Top 2 Box
How strongly do you agree with the statement "ACT! by Sage 2010 will help grow my business"? 75% Top 2 Box
How strongly do you agree with the statement "ACT! by Sage 2010 will help me become more productive"? 83% Top 2 Box
Compared to the navigation in previous versions of ACT!, would you say the navigation experience in ACT! 2010 is: 73% Top 2 Box
On a scale of 1-10, "1" being not at all likely and "10" being very likely: How Likely would you be to recommend ACT! 2010 to a friend or colleague? 65% Top 2 Box (rated as 9 or 10)
Would you participate in another ACT! beta program? 99% Top Box

Equally exciting are qualitative comments we received from Beta users. Here’s a sample:

“Great to see this feature [iCalendar] incorporated. You people have really out done yourselves with the new features this year. It is nice not to have to switch back and forth between ACT! and outlook. ”
“Have been testing this and so far I really like it. I have used other programs, GM for example, and so far this out performs it.”
“Long time user of ACT! and continue to love the product and evolution it has taken.”
“I certainly can be more productive as ACT! by Sage 2010 is faster and easier to use than previous editions.”
“This version is by far the best ever. You will blow away your competition on this version. I never used the Opportunity layout before and now I spent all my time there trying to tailor it to my needs. Awesome! Give yourselves a pat on the back. I am an ACT! addict now.”
“The Web Info tab is great and VERY beneficial to a sales team needing to get background information about a potential client. Great Idea!”

As you can imagine, the enitre ACT! team is excited and anxious to unfold the next chapter of one of the longest running titles in the SW industry. As mentioned, Early Bird Sales in North America for ACT! 2010 started yesterday. If you already received an offer, simply follow the link or call instructions. If you did not, and you live in North America, click on the url below or simply call us at:

888-507-2010

http://offer.act.com/2010/landing/index/EBSLSTDSU9

If you live outside of North America, ACT! 2010 information will be available soon from your regional Sage Operating Company.

I hope you enjoy what we’ve done with ACT! – also, note some of the capabilities we discussed in our recent 3 part series “Social Contact Management” made their way into ACT! 2010 – check out the “web information” tab!

Regards, Larry

ACT! and the Web - Social Contact Management: Part 3 of 3

larryr — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:26:17 GMT

Part 3 of 3: “How ACT! can help me in the new Internet enabled World”

In Part 2 we saw how our prospects are increasingly being influenced by sources they find on the Web. Fortunately, the internet works for all us. So as a vendor working with a prospect we can also leverage the Web to gather information about our prospects. At Sage, we emphasized a concept we call the “Anywhere Workforce Experience” in our Sage CRM Solutions 2010 strategy. See the published strategy whitepaper for full details though at the core is the fact we are already taking advantage of and plan to go deeper in terms of exploiting the Web.

For example, within ACT! there are a number of convenient plug-ins or “mash-ups” available that pass contents from relevant fields to a variety of internet services. For example, some really simple “mash-ups” pass the name of the current contact I am viewing to common search engines, like Google. The results are then conveniently displayed. without any further user action. Then as I transition to another contact, the same results are displayed for that contact – providing convenient “in-context” results for each contact. This means results are automatically updated and always up to date as I move between contacts. Others are available for displaying driving directions, searching for names on Social Networking sites, like LinkedIn, etc. These simple but powerful concepts enable ACT! users to leverage and harness the internet to make us more productive when dealing with our customers. Your ACT! Certified Consultant can help you with these “mash-ups” and/or you can download them from the Developers Network portion of this community.

We intend to go further in this space by looking at a company and leveraging services that provide additional names of contacts within the firm. Other examples would be to use the result of search to find related contacts, customers and influencers. This would enable me to understand the extended connections of my prospect and how they might be brought to bear on a particular opportunity.

We are in the infant stages of Social CM. We expect to continuously improve the connectivity and benefits of leveraging the internet and ACT!. We have a range of ideas from simple connections to existing internet sites to fully functioning services that operate independently.

I hope this 3 part series was interesting to you. Since I started this series I had the chane to presnet at the North America Sage Insights conference. I shaerd some thoughts on how Socila Media is shaping the Contact Management and CRM space with our partners and a numebr of Analysts. This led to an invite to be one of 30 bloggers in a recent CRM Magazine focus on the topic. Here is the link for the interested:

http://www.destinationcrmblog.com/2009/06/16/social-media-maturity-model-information-wants-to-find-you/

I’d love to hear your ideas for services and internet connections that would be of most interest to you.

Larry

ACT! and the Web - Social Contact Management: Part 2 of 3

larryr — Tue, 12 May 2009 11:55:20 GMT

In this Part 2, we’ll look at the changing nature of the way our customers/prospects acquire information about our products, service and company.

Re: ACT! 2009 (v11) Update

DJ2009 — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:12:26 GMT

Darren,

Even though I'm a bit disappointed, I appreciate your quick response and suggested solution