I didn’t know I could do that with ACT!

ACT! contact management software was introduced over 20 years ago.  Although originally designed as the simplest of tools, ACT! has evolved considerably over the last few years. The changes in ACT! have been so significant, in fact, that it’s often lumped into the CRM category (erroneously, but we’ll get to that).  Unlike enterprise-level applications, ACT! is contact-centric, with a focus  on managing and maintaining interactions with individuals.

The current version of ACT! (2009, v 11.1) supports pipeline management, account-level management, manages relationships between contact records, and even has modest workflow capabilties.  While ACT! isn’t as feature-rich as CRM software, depending on your business requirements, that might be a distinction without a difference.

A big advantage of CRM is that it provides a 360 degree view of the customer – let’s call that the whole pie. But, what if your business only needs a slice of pie?

CRM pie - too filling?

The cost of customer relationship management software is exponentially greater than the cost of contact management software.  I’ve seen companies spend 10′s of thousands of dollars for CRM software when all they required were a few features not natively in ACT! That’s not sound ROI management and there are alternatives.

A less costly way to go is to integrate ACT! (or other contact manager) with a third-party product to enhance its capabilities. I’ve heard resistance to this approach, as in “I don’t want a bunch of ‘bolt-ons’”.  I expect the “bolt-on” reaction comes from those who got  stuck with software whipped up by a colleague’s  brother’s nephew. We’ve all been there and it’s not pretty. Where is that guy when you need him, anyway?

There is a community of talented developers who work with Sage, using tools approved and provided by Sage, to create slick integrations to significantly ramp-up ACT!’s capabilities – just a slice of pie, as it were.

Over the next six articles, we’ll look at ways you can scale not only ACT! but many other contact managers and CRM applications by integrating 3rd-party solutions.

Whether a business requires advanced reporting, quoting, dashboards, e-mail marketing or other business tools, you may only need to invest a little to get a great deal of additional functionality. Next time, we’ll look at integrating robust quoting capabilites into ACT!, Goldmine, salesforce.com, SalesLogix, and other CRM and contact management programs using QuoteWerks.