Sage Act

Act is probably the best known and most used of small-business customer relationship management (CRM) applications. It provides the tools needed to manage customer contacts and any associated written, email, phone or other communication.

Now owned by Sage, the 2009 release is the 11th in its long history, with a lot of useful new functionality as well as the usual middle-age nips and tucks.

Part of the appeal of Act is that it’s very easy to get up and running, all you need is a Windows PC. Installation takes just a few minutes with an integrated setup routine to handle everything involved, including making sure you have the correct .Net Framework and a copy of SQL Server Express 2005, to manage the data.

Another benefit is that there is no need for any database expertise, for the most part you won’t even know it is there. In addition the database can be shared by up to 10 clients or if you go for Act Premium (£295 ex Vat per user) there are also a few extra options plus a web-based version of the product added on.

On the downside it can take a while to get to grips with everything Act has to offer, but a key selling point has to be Office integration. Small businesses like Act because, rather than use the built-in tools to manage customer contacts, write letters, send emails and so on, Outlook and Word can be used instead.

Thankfully, all the necessary integration work is all done during setup. Outlook integration is further enhanced in the latest version with a new setup assistant to make it easier to configure new users, plus the ability to quickly attach multiple emails from different senders to contact records.

You can also use Outlook’s message rules to do this kind of processing automatically. It’s also now possible to create Act activities directly from within an Outlook email, for example, to schedule a meeting or create a to-do item when a message arrives.

Calendars come in for an update too, with a new one-click button to sync hronise data held in Act and Outlook formats. Act calendars can also now be printed with filters, such as date ranges and priority settings applied.

Similarly contact names associated with an activity can be included in the printouts, while in the premium edition you can view activities for all users, not just 10 as before.

Certain features which were previously only available in Act Premium have also been migrated to the standard package. Principally these include task-automation options, with a built-in scheduler to take backups and perform other maintenance tasks as well as copy calendars between Act and Outlook.

Backups can also be speeded up by excluding message attachments and when synchronising data to mobile devices there’s an improved progress bar to show more accurately what’s happening.

Then there are those nips and tucks we mentioned, such as being able to search for a contact using part of a name or title and switch between contact, group and company searches without having to re-type the parameters. You can also view recent contact lookups by type, date and so on.

All of which makes it even easier to get attached to this affordable CRM tool which grows on you the more you use it, the latest version further adding to the appeal.