ACT! 2009 (v11) Update

[#1]

I wanted to give you an update on ACT! 2009.  A key theme for the release was “you asked, we listened”.  We spent a lot of time with customers and partners to understand the tasks our users perform most frequently.   Then, we focused on streamlining and optimizing the experience of these top tasks.  We added a number of features and enhanced others with a specific intent to improve ease of use, reduce the number of keystrokes and overall simplicity.  We had one of our largest beta participation groups and the beta feedback was encouraging.  Needless to say, we were quite anxious to get actual feedback from you since the release in August. From our support team, an improved installation experience has resulted in fewer customers needing to call for assistance during install and more efficient solutions for those that do.  As a result, the average time to reach a support representative has decreased and our overall support satisfaction has increased. Product feedback is equally encouraging.  Since ACT! 2007 (v9.0.1), we have used an embedded in product survey.  This survey helps us collect 60 day and 180 day feedback from actual users.  The 60 day results for ACT! 2009 are now coming in and ACT! 2009 are showing another positive increase.  We are seeing across the board increases in feature satisfaction.  The Net Promoter Score – How likely are you to recommend ACT! to a colleague or friend? – also shows a very healthy increase.   If you haven’t had a chance to take a look at ACT! 2009, I hope you do soon.  We’re really encouraged by the feedback and “If you keep asking, we’ll keep listening”.  v11.1 is in beta and we’re busily planning releases beyond. Thanks for the ongoing dialog through this community and other feedback paths.  It gives us great energy when we hear from you, our ACT! Fanatics!   Thanks,  Larry

[#2]

Hi Larry,

Have found the installation process for V.11 many times more reliable. It is much easier when upgrading from previous versions. In the past I've always un-installed prior to installing a new version. I have been installing straight over the top with V.11 and have had no problems to date which has been a great time saver.

Making the product easier to use with a more modern and intuitive User Interface has to be worked on further I think. Look forward to some of the things you have in the pipeline there.

The Net Promoter Score is a good metric. To be honest we have been riding the good will of the ACT! user base for some time since the move to the new SQL .Net platform, I think we are definately on an upward curve to getting people to loving ACT! again with the later versions, particularly this one. Any chance you can share what the current Net Promoter score is? Nothing like putting it out there to give you the challenge to improve on it.

Good to meet you at the conference recently, look forward to hearing more about the direction of ACT!, particular in relation to the 2010 vision.

Cheers,

Darren.

[#3]

Hi Darren,

Thanks for the reponse and confirmation of the v11 progress. We generally don't specifically publish the NPS though I can assure you we challenge our team to dissect the various drivers we see in the responses.

You can look forward to ongoing ACT! improvements to overall usability to reduce clicks, improve clarity, easier feature discovery, etc. We also have plenty of new features on the drawing board as well.

Thanks for being an ACT! Fanatic,

Larry

[#4]

I'd like to offer my congrats to the dev team... with ACT! 2009, I feel that the product is back to being the best product for SME and corporate work group CRM in the market and once again worthy of the brand.

As someone who has devoted 21 years to the product, I can see this as a time to focus again on the solutions rather than fighting with .Net and SQL.

The opportunity this gives for Sage to market the brand and to work on new and exciting features must be good for the morale in the product group.

Thanks guys,
Mike Lazarus

[#5]

Any more feedback or update news?

We desperatly need updates to SAFARI Support.

[#6]

Hi Michael,

We will have a number of updates to ACT! v11 during the new year.  From your message I can't determine specifically what update to SFARI you are after though I know there are a number of desired enhancements.  Can I ask you to check in directly with Beth Kohler and team to make sure we fully communicate on this?

Thanks, Larry

[#7]

Larry,

I just installed 2009 v 11.1   I've been using ACT on a daily basis since 2001. I was very happy when the tab for secondary contacts was added however I've been disappointed that there's never been an upgrade allowing the seconadary contacts to be part of activities such as secheduling of meetings, calls, and emails. It makes no sense to me that I should have to duplicate a contact in order to add another primary POC. I deal with architechs in which I can easily have 25 plus contacts for the same firm. Please tell me that this is something that the development team is working on. I happy with the seamless integration of outlook, unfortunitly when emailing a secondary contact cannot be added to the history without going back to type in the information yourself.

Thanks

DJ

[#8]

DJ,

The best bet for you is to:

1. Promote all your Secondary Contacts to Contacts

2. Create a Company record for all the companies where there are more than one contact

3. Associate all the Contacts to the relevant Company record.

My view is that secondary contacts should be used sparingly, if at all. By promoting your secondary contacts to contacts and connecting to Companies you get all the benefits of being able to attach emails to them indicidually, associate tasks etc. You can then go to the Companies record and view the history of all the contacts in the one view.

As the functionality you are after is in place I would say that Sage won't be adding the functionality that you are after to the secondary contacts. I have seen demos and some info on version 12 (2010) and it certainly doesn't appear to be in that version so you will have a long wait if they do decide to add it in future versions.

The question is how do you re-arrange your database to use contacts and companies rather than contacts and secondary contacts. It depends on the size of your database. I recently did a project for a client that had to do the same thing. They had about 1200 contacts with an average of 10 secondary contacts per contact. It wasn't feasable to do it manually so we used some 3rd party utilities to do the job. There are a couple of different add-ons you could use. I would check out www.rowcol.co.uk for there bulk secondary contact promotion utility for a start.

Might be worth finding and experience local ACT! Certified Consultant to discuss this project. Although there will be an associated expense for getting them involved it will allow you to hand over the responsibility of getting it done right and getting it done quick.

Cheers, Darren Flood.

[#9]

Darren,

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

DJ

[#10]

I have been using Act since the late 90's and have stopped at 2009 11.0 I am very frustrated that 2008 would not allow me to update and 2009 will not update from 11.0, everytime I try to do an automatic update I get error 1603 and cannot access my program with out uninstalling and reinstalling with out any updates. Do you have a solution for this yet?

[#11]

Hi Mollie,

Sorry to hear about the challenges you are facing.  I .  would suggest you post your question in the ACT! section of the community.  There are many customers and CC's that read/respond there and I am hoping you can get some get help.  Here is the link:

http://community.act.com/sage/board?board.id=ACT