Act!

Opmerkingen: Act allows us to manage a vast database of over 85,000 contacts and 15,000 companies, as well as over 100,000 Table records between the two, with ease. Any information we need to find or update with these records is as easy as it gets, and makes our customer service team's jobs a relative breeze. There are hiccups here and there, especially with newer features to the program, but there's never been any issues that interrupt work or cause data loss, and the tech support available is very handy at resolving any issues we might have.

Pluspunten: Everything in a Contact or Company record's layout can be customized, moved around, hidden on a per-user basis, and otherwise manipulated however your organization needs it to be. My company makes heavy use of this feature, having multiple team-based layouts that present the most important data to those teams prominently. We also greatly enjoy the software's ability to perform advanced queries on the data that can be saved and re-run with a single click to provide accurate reports and drill down to specific needs in moments.

Minpunten: There are quite a few features that feel incomplete or at least not fully integrated. For example, the software comes with the ability to create and Mail Merge templated emails that imports information like a contact's name, and the Smart Tasks feature allows you to automatically perform certain tasks including sending an email to a contact, yet for some reason you can't do both - that is, you can't set a Smart Task to perform a Mail Merge to a templated email and send the result, meaning that the automated emails cannot contain information personal to the contact such as their name.

Opmerkingen: See What I liked most.

Pluspunten: Started using Act about 25 years ago. Have added contacts since and used most of the features. Over time the use of certain features such as mass mailings to customer lists have faded, and now occasionally by e-mail. Over time I have come to value how I can locate someone that was a customer years ago, and have a complete record of a transaction, conversation or specific subject we were involved in. You have to learn to use for nearly every phone conversation or piece of correspondence. If you do, you will always be able to revert back to a contact, and who said what when. What correspondence was involved etc. To say nothing about scheduling appointments, and being reminded of birthdays and other important events. Act is the backbone of my business and personal contact information. Invaluable and used every day. I have used over may revisions and Company changes. Sometimes the customer service is better than others. Presently the Customer Service is Excellent. If you are a first time user or considering starting to use it I would recommend you take a course on using it as many of the features are not apparent unless someone shows them to you. A great tool to keep track of what everyone on your team is doing and as they move on a record of what they did and who was involved. A great tool that I rely on daily. Happy to spread the word.

Minpunten: Many features that I never use, but see how others would. Don't like having to use MS Outlook for e-mail. Would like to access completely by phone, but my database is too big.