Sales force automation software
ACT! V5.04
When the application is run for the first time, the user is presented with a configuration wizard which simply allows the user to select their preferred word processor--either ACT's own, complete with built-in spell checker, or MS Word-the fax driver if present, and finally e-mail and contact database setup, all quite straightforward and painless.
There is a small demo database to play around with, but given the application is relatively easy to drive, at least in comparison to some of the others, you will probably leap right into it.
Setting up clients is easy and should you wish to import existing data ACT can handle Dbase III to V files, Q&A V4.0 to 5.0, and delimited text files. Export is a little more limited and other than previous versions of ACT, only delimited text is supported.
The user interface is quite straightforward but it's not as easy to use as Legrand, for example. Although it does not seem any more powerful than the other applications tested, the menu options are extensive and of course are context sensitive.
Selecting an item from the task bar down the left side results in a change in the menus presented and the small tool bar on top of the data window.
The contact layout is not set in stone; there is a tool for customising the contact template called "design layouts", that allows the user to add more fields or modify the overall layout. At this point you can also nominate which fields are mandatory and which are optional in terms of data input.
The default layout is perfectly usable and certainly the provided fields should more than suffice. Contacts can be viewed individually, as a list (in which you can edit and tag contacts), and finally as groups, which is represented in an easy-to-navigate tree structure.
Searching the contacts is powerful--it can search on any field you like--but is menu driven by default; there are no search buttons in the tool bar. Not to worry, you can customise the toolbar extensively by adding buttons corresponding to any of the menu items.
The calendar functions are quite standard, the daily, weekly, and monthly displays are clear and easy to follow. Items can be rescheduled on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or a fairly simple user-definable basis.
And while you can create an "activity series" to remind you to follow up a sale with a courtesy call in a week or so, it is not an automatic procedure, and the reminder must be manually set.
As an example we set up an activity called Sales Follow Up, that reminded the salesperson to ring the client seven days after a sale, but we could find no way to have it automatically schedule itself after a sale. The calendar can synchronise with a Palm PDA and Outlook.
The e-mail client can also link to Outlook and Lotus Notes, which allows the user to create and track e-mails from their contacts. Correspondence such as mail merges, faxes, and the like are also linked to your clients, and its simple to personalise a fax out.
Networking features are perhaps not handled as elegantly as some of the other products, but ACT shares the database over the network and allows you to synchronise with other sales staff via e-mail thus seamlessly sharing information and schedules. Of course, record locking and password protection are included.
ACT has quite an impressive array of default reports and the user is free to customise the report templates any way they see fit. The reports range from simple monthly appointment listings, to forecast sales for the month, or any other time period.
In the case of sales, the report can take the form of a graph, although there only appear to be three options here-opportunities, forecast adjusted for probability, and closed/won.
