Opinion: ACT! For Financial Professionals or ACT! For Advisors?

[Tmart13]

I would love someone's opinion on this:

I'm going to purchase either ACT! For Financial Professionals or ACT! 2008 and get the ACT! For Advisors plug in. Does anyone know which one is better?

For the ACT! For Financial Professionals, is it any more difficult for me to convert a 6.0 database into this software? I know I can easily convert the 6.0 database into ACT! 2008.

I would appreciate any feedback, especially from those who have used either one. Also, if one option is less costly, please let me know.

I look forward to everyone's responses...thanks!

[tsabboud]

Act4Advisors is available for ACT! 6.0 and ACT! 2006-2008.

You don't have to upgrade the ACT! 6.0 version to make it work for ACT! 2008.

[Tmart13]

Thanks, I was aware of that but we want to upgrade to the newest version of ACT! I just wanted to know what was the best way to tailor it to a financial professional.

Thanks!

[HankFoley]

The Financial Professionals version seems well-suited for its target.

[iwendlei]

Act4Advisors is a better product. I really like the look and smart design of Act4Advisors in comparison to ACT! for Financial Professionals (a bit dated and beastly in design). The folks at Act4Advisors not only provide support on technical issues if any arises but also best practices.

I want to point out that ACT! for Financial Professionals is its own version of ACT! very similar to ACT! for Real Estate. Like ACT! for Real Estate, ACT! for Financial Professionals. Act4Advisors is a customized ACT! database and you may customize further to fit your needs.

Since ACT! for Real Estate and ACT! for Financial Professionals  can’t save a database back to a regular version of ACT!, the customer is stuck with that version…forever. Unless of course a consultant extracts their data and then reimports it back into an ACT database (ie. Act4Advisors with ACT! 2009). 

I also found that ACT! for Financial Professionals does not have the 2009 version yet.  

  

Message Edited by iwendlei on 02-04-2009 03:20 PM

Message Edited by iwendlei on 02-04-2009 03:21 PM

Message Edited by iwendlei on 02-04-2009 03:21 PM

[sheneish]

Act4Advisors is a better solution. The way it's designed is more suitable for the financial industry. They have the related household information together. In ACT! for Financial Professionals the first field i saw was the company name which doesn't make sense.

In Act4Advisors they also have a scanning and document management feature. This allows you to scan and save documents right under the contact which makes it easy to retrieve later.