Tag Search:
Integrating Your Website and ACT! using Swiftpage
Posted: Monday, March 7, 2011 at 11:57:29 AM EST by Website Administrator
Integrating Your Website and ACT! using Swiftpage
Webinar with Darren Flood | Evolution Marketing
Darren is a true expert in building sales and marketing automation strategies that bring revenue to your business. His extensive knowledge is something you won't want to miss.
When:
Australia time: Friday, March 18th from 8:00-9:00 AM AEST (9:00-10:00 AM AEDST)
What You'll Learn:
- Why integrating your web forms with ACT! is essential
- The types of web forms that benefit most businesses
- The crucial elements to consider when designing web forms
- What you need to tell your web designer after you've built your forms
- How to download inquiries from web forms into ACT! and much more...
Triple Treat - Getting your Quoting, Sales Follow-up and Invoicing Systems Integrated
Posted: Thursday, March 10, 2011 at 9:56:41 AM EST by Website AdministratorThe Problems
- Your process for generating a quote or proposal is S-L-O-W. You have a ramshackle system of Word documents and Excel Spreadsheets that takes too long to put together.
- Your Sales people aren't adding or updating Sales Opportunities in your CRM system because it makes an already slow process even slower.
- Every Sales person in your team has a different system for generating quotes and proposals, some are probably better than others, but all of them could be better.
- As a Business Owner or Manager you can't ensure all your Opportunities are being managed because you don't have accurate and up to date information.
- When you do win business, your Accounts Person creates a sales order or invoice and basically has to double enter all the information from the quote or proposal. You probably don't mind so much because at least you won the order, but it does nag at you that you have already paid your sales staff to add that information to the quote or proposal and as a Sales Opportunity in the CRM system.
All this double handling of information and slow process is costing your business money. And, you still probably don't have the information you need to properly manage what's happening with your valuable Sales Opportunities.
The Solution
- Get Quote & Proposal Automation software like Quosal. It will make quotes faster to generate, give all your staff a consistent, optimised presentation of their quote or proposal documents AND it will add or update the Sales Opportunity in your CRM system.
- Get a CRM System like Sage ACT! 2011. Not only is this a central location for storing and analysing your Sales Opportunities but it will give your Sales people the system they need for scheduling their follow ups and manage the relationship with the prospect during the sales process.
- Integrate your CRM system to your Accounting system with products like the ACT! to MYOB or ACT! to QuickBooks links. This will mean no double entry of data for anyone in your team. What was quoted and what was accepted is what will be created as a Sales order or Invoice, at the click of a button.
The bottom linke for businesses is that if they can make their systems for generating quotes and proposals better and faster, there will be more time for following up quotes and closing business. With the increased business you generate, you won't need to increase your staffing levels in accounts because you've simplified and sped up that process as well.
The Proof
Basic Accounting Integration with ACT!
Posted: Tuesday, July 19, 2011 at 6:14:09 PM EST by Website AdministratorLinking your ACT! database to your accounting system will allow you to see the financial information you need for a full view of your relationship with a client.
Your ACT! database will give you a lot of information about your clients, including file notes and histories, open sales opportunities, open follow up tasks and all email correspondence. BUT, it doesn't tell you how much they have spent with you this month or this year. OR, it doesn't tell you whether or not that client's account has been paid or put on hold!
This sort of information is valuable to sales people and other users in a business that are mostly working from ACT!.
If you use a common small business accounting package there are solutions available with the ACT! to MYOB link, the ACT! to QuickBooks link and the ACT! to Xero link. However, for businesses that are using a more specialised accounting package, 'off the shelf' links aren't available.
In these situations, it is often still possible to link an accounting system to ACT!.
Firstly, when linking your accounting system to your ACT! database you need to identify what information you want to come into your ACT! database. For many businesses, some general summary information is all that's required..
This information usually includes:
- Account Status
- YTD Sales
- MTD Sales
Does your business have trouble managing its contacts?
Posted: Monday, August 15, 2011 at 12:23:37 PM EST by Website AdministratorManaging contact information is hard for many businesses. If it is ten times easier to get business from existing clients - why do businesses find it so hard to manage their valuable client and contact information?
- Multiple data sources: customer and contact details are located ‘all over the place’. This usually includes:
- Individual email address books
- Multiple spread sheets, and
- The accounting system
- No program that does it all: of all the software in your company, including Outlook, Excel and your Accounting system, none of them seem to be able to do the job of storing and managing all your customer and contact information.
- Double entry of data: even if it only takes a minute to add or update a new contact, this is always tedious and relies on all staff completing the double entry.
- Lost prospects: whilst every business has a list of all of its customers in its accounting system, it doesn’t always have a list of all its prospects. Every new lead or contact is of value to your business and often people who contact you for the first time don’t get their details recorded.
- No single version of the truth: when Johnny updated Billy’s new email address in his Outlook address book he didn’t update it in the various company spreadsheets or in the accounting system. When you go to do that email broadcast you’ve been working hard on, Billy wasn’t on that list.
- Missing the most important contacts: the accounts receivable contact for your client might be recorded in your accounting system, but the key decision makers may not.
- Marketing is time consuming and difficult: sending a mail merge or an email broadcast is actually pretty easy to do. It’s the finding of all your contacts in their various locations, merging them together and then removing the duplicates that takes the time. What’s worse is that this process happens every time you need to do a mail out.
- Eliminate double entry of data: one place for adding and updating contacts for all staff.
- Find information quickly: search for a contact using the company name; first name; last name or any other piece of information to find them.
- Record all your contacts: all key contacts from your clients should be recorded, including the key decision makers and influencers. All your prospective clients should also be recorded. It’s even a good idea to add your suppliers and other business contacts too.
- Get rid of spread sheets for managing contact lists!
- Record history: record of history of phone calls, meetings and emails.
- Links with existing systems: you’ll still need Outlook for email and your accounting system, so your contacts database should link with these systems.
- Protect your data: your companies contact information is valuable so it’s important to have it in the one secure location.
- Enable your marketing: having all your contacts centrally located with some in-built email broadcast and mail merge features you’ll be able to increase your direct marketing to those who are most likely to want to do business with you – your existing clients and contacts!
- Select a database. The ‘ideal solution’ that addresses the issue above is called Contact Management or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. Not only will it give you the one database to store all your contacts, it will give you all the features and functions you need to better manage and market to them.
- Import your data: once you have contact management software in place you will need to import all your contacts that are stored in your companies various Excel spread sheets and Outlook address books. You might even want to add all the contacts from those piles of business cards that your sales people have been collecting!
- Link to your existing systems: connect your new database to Outlook, Excel, Word and your accounting system. This way you can continue to use these important programs for what they specialise in and manage your entire contacts database in your new database without having to double enter data between them.
The reasons for using this software ourselves and recommending it to clients include:
- Very easy to use
- Links with Microsoft Outlook, Word and Excel.
- Records history from calls, meetings and emails against contacts records.
- Links with MYOB and QuickBooks.
- Built-in Email Marketing
If you would like to know more about how SageACT! can help your business, please contact us for a Free Consultation and Demonstration.
3 Options for Getting ACT! Onto Your Phone
Posted: Monday, August 22, 2011 at 3:46:39 PM EST by Website Administrator
|
Today’s smart phone and mobile devices are pretty impressive and are widely used by business people and their staff. For some users, these devices are being used more than their laptop or desktop computers. So, if you use ACT! in your business then it’s pretty likely that your going to want to have ACT! on your phone too. Depending on what sort of phone you have and how many users you need to mobilise with ACT!, you have a number of options. These include: |
 |
Option 1: Contact Sync with SageACT! 2011
• Free with SageACT! 2011
• Syncs Contacts and Calendar between ACT! and Outlook
• Requires your phone or mobile device to sync with Outlook
Option 2: Handheld Contact
• Syncs wirelessly and automatically.
• Runs from your server and has a free app for your mobile device
• $200 per annum annual subscription per device.
• Available for iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Windows Mobile
• Not available for Android devices yet. (coming soon)
Option 3: 123 Syncronizer
• Ideal for organisations using Microsoft Exchange as their email server
• Syncs Contacts, Calendars and Tasks with Exchange
• Allows phones and mobile devices wirelessly connected with Exchange to interact with ACT!
• Also very good for organisations that have some staff working from Outlook and not ACT!. Allows the whole organisation to see what is happening via Outlook but still allow ACT! users the added functionality of managing their contacts and calendars from ACT!.
Mobilising your business with your Contacts, History, Calendars and Tasks from ACT! can benefit your business in many ways.
For a Free Consultation to discuss which option is best for your business call Today on 1300 799 064
Sage ACT! 2011 SP1 Hot Fix 6 available
Posted: Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 2:39:24 PM EST by Website AdministratorWhat issues does this hot fix address?
- Synchronisation of remote databases takes a long time to complete and you get time out errors.
- Importing fails when merge option is set to “merge”.
- Reduces the incidence of the “red X” in the toolbar.
This hot fix applies if you are running one of the following versions of Sage ACT!
- Sage ACT! Pro 2011 SP1 (version 13.1.111.0).
- Sage ACT! Premium 2011 SP1 (version 13.1.111.0).
- Sage ACT! Premium 2011 (access via web) SP1 (web server version 13.1.111.0).
And it applicable to the following locales:
- AU (Australia).
- CA (Canada).
- EU (Europe).
- FR (French).
- LA (Latin America).
- UK (United Kingdom).
- US (United States).
Should I install this hot fix?
If you are not using remote databases, not importing data or using terminal services, then you may not need to apply this hot fix. If, however, you are doing any of those activities, you should apply this hot fix.
How do I install this hot fix?
If you are going to install this yourself, keep in mind that you must apply this hot fix to all computers running ACT! at the same time. With that in mind, you can visit the Sage ACT! Knowledge Base Article 27440 for detailed instructions.
Where do I download this hot fix from?
The Sage ACT! Knowledge Base article gives the download links, for your convenience I’ve copied the download links here:
Remember, if you would like assistance to do this, please contact us to book a job for one of our technical staff to do apply this hot fix for you, which, of course, we would love to do for you :)
Sage ACT! 2012 Premium for Web SP1 Hot Fix 1 Available
Posted: Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 3:25:14 PM EST by Website AdministratorWhat issues does this hot fix address?
- This hot fix resolves an issue in the Web version of Sage ACT! where the Opportunity Limited Access default settings are not retained when you create a new Opportunity from the Opportunities tab in the Contact Detail view.
This hot fix only applies if you are running the following version of Sage ACT!
- Sage ACT! Premium 2012 (access via web) SP1 (web server version 14.1.108.0).
And it is applicable to the following locales:
- AU (Australia).
- CA (Canada).
- EU (Europe).
- FR (French).
- LA (Latin America).
- UK (United Kingdom).
- US (United States).
Should I install this hot fix?
If you are using Sage ACT! Premium for Web 2012 Service Pack 1 you should apply this hot fix.
How do I install this hot fix?
You can visit the Sage ACT! Knowledge Base Article 28810 for detailed instructions.
Where do I download this hot fix from?
The Sage ACT! Knowledge Base article gives the download links, for your convenience I’ve copied the download links here:
Remember, if you would like assistance to do this, please contact us to book a job for one of our technical staff to do apply this hot fix for you, which, of course, we would love to do for you. :)
DELETEMEPLEASE
Posted: Tuesday, May 29, 2012 at 9:22:23 AM EST by Ben Hamiltion
This week has seen the rollout of ACT! for a recruitment firm in New South Wales and a distribution firm based in Tasmania.
We've also begun upgrading a national machinery company from ACT! by Sage Premium 2009 to Sage ACT! Premium 2012 who has a number of remotely sync'ing databases on field staff laptops.
Also we've setup ACT! on a virtual machine client. This was done for a couple reasons:
- So that they can change the underlying hardware at a moments notice without disrupting use of ACT!.
- So the staff member can access it from where-ever they happen to be, from what-ever device they are using.
We've also setup the newly released ACT! Premium for Web Mobile for a client. In a nutshell it's a HTML5 based web interface that allows you to get live acccess to your ACT! database from iPads and other tablets and phones.
Katrina and I have done a lot of data importing this week, we've been cleaning data and importing it into Companies, Sub-companies, Contacts, Secondary Contacts, Notes and Histories all the while making sure they all associate with the correct Contacts and Companies.
A number of clients this week also engaged in training on e-marketing, mostly around using Swiftpage with ACT! more effectively.
This weeks quick tip: Often you want to email someone the contact details of another person, so in ACT!, while on the contact detail view, press CTRL-C (Copy), then in your email you can press CTRL-V (Paste) to paste in that contacts details.
Remember, we can help get your ACT! together.
The purpose of the ‘Week in review’ blog post: to give our readers some insight into what we are working on. We all get ideas and inspiration from observing the work of other professionals. We hope these short weekly updates deliver this for readers of our blog.
Who this post is for: Existing clients that are looking to get more from their CRM system and the relationship with Evolution Marketing and prospective clients that are interested in see what we can do.
What we do: We help businesses work out what they need to better manage their customer and contact information. We like to understand what your requirements are and then offer you advice on the best systems to achieve those objectives. We also provide Implementation, Training and on-going support. There are 3 CRM platforms we recommend, depending on a clients situation. They include SageACT!, SugarCRM and Nimble. We have a lot of SugarCRM work happening behind the scenes but are currently only sharing what is happening with our SageACT! projects in this blog series.
What would we like you to do: Leave a comment on this post. Follow us on Twitter or Facebook. Send us an email or give us a call. We’re interested in what your problems and goals are around enabling your business with better customer relationship management.
Week In Review (25th May 2012)
Posted: Tuesday, May 29, 2012 at 11:06:19 AM EST by Ben HamiltionThis week has seen the rollout of ACT! for a recruitment firm in New South Wales and a distribution firm based in Tasmania.
We've also begun upgrading a national machinery company from ACT! by Sage Premium 2009 to Sage ACT! Premium 2012 who has a number of remotely sync'ing databases on field staff laptops.
Also we've setup ACT! on a virtual machine client. This was done for a couple reasons:
- So that they can change the underlying hardware at a moments notice without disrupting use of ACT!.
- So the staff member can access it from where-ever they happen to be, from what-ever device they are using.
We've also setup the newly released ACT! Premium for Web Mobile for a client. In a nutshell it's a HTML5 based web interface that allows you to get live acccess to your ACT! database from iPads and other tablets and phones.
Katrina and I have done a lot of data importing this week, we've been cleaning data and importing it into Companies, Sub-companies, Contacts, Secondary Contacts, Notes and Histories all the while making sure they all associate with the correct Contacts and Companies.
A number of clients this week also engaged in training on e-marketing, mostly around using Swiftpage with ACT! more effectively.
This weeks quick tip: Often you want to email someone the contact details of another person, so in ACT!, while on the contact detail view, press CTRL-C (Copy), then in your email you can press CTRL-V (Paste) to paste in that contacts details.
Remember, we can help get your ACT! together.
The purpose of the ‘Week in review’ blog post: to give our readers some insight into what we are working on. We all get ideas and inspiration from observing the work of other professionals. We hope these short weekly updates deliver this for readers of our blog.
Who this post is for: Existing clients that are looking to get more from their CRM system and the relationship with Evolution Marketing and prospective clients that are interested in see what we can do.
What we do: We help businesses work out what they need to better manage their customer and contact information. We like to understand what your requirements are and then offer you advice on the best systems to achieve those objectives. We also provide Implementation, Training and on-going support. There are 3 CRM platforms we recommend, depending on a clients situation. They include SageACT!, SugarCRM and Nimble. We have a lot of SugarCRM work happening behind the scenes but are currently only sharing what is happening with our SageACT! projects in this blog series.
What would we like you to do: Leave a comment on this post. Follow us on Twitter or Facebook. Send us an email or give us a call. We’re interested in what your problems and goals are around enabling your business with better customer relationship management.
Week In Review (1st June 2012)
Posted: Friday, June 1, 2012 at 4:47:57 PM EST by Ben Hamiltion
This week we have rolled out ACT! for more than 40 users nationally. Also we setup Handheld Contact for 7 mobile users so they can access all their CRM data while on the road with their iPads and smart phones.
For another client we've configured Auto Field Calculations so that some key bits of information they collect are processed and other fields are automatically modified to be the appropriate value.
On the development side we've scoped, built and designed a new database schema for a client who supplies product to promotional companies and we'll be rolling that out in the near future.
One of the tricks we learnt this week was to do with Date Fields in ACT!- if you press the '+' or '-' keys (not on the numeric keypad) you can increment/decrement the day. By doing the same with the 'SHIFT' key depressed, you can increment/decrement the month. If you're a keyboard power user, this can save you from having to grab that mouse!
Remember, we can help get your ACT! together.
The purpose of the ‘Week in review’ blog post: to give our readers some insight into what we are working on. We all get ideas and inspiration from observing the work of other professionals. We hope these short weekly updates deliver this for readers of our blog.
Who this post is for: Existing clients that are looking to get more from their CRM system and the relationship with Evolution Marketing and prospective clients that are interested in see what we can do.
What we do: We help businesses work out what they need to better manage their customer and contact information. We like to understand what your requirements are and then offer you advice on the best systems to achieve those objectives. We also provide Implementation, Training and on-going support. There are 3 CRM platforms we recommend, depending on a clients situation. They include SageACT!, SugarCRM and Nimble. We have a lot of SugarCRM work happening behind the scenes but are currently only sharing what is happening with our SageACT! projects in this blog series.
What would we like you to do: Leave a comment on this post. Follow us on Twitter or Facebook. Send us an email or give us a call. We’re interested in what your problems and goals are around enabling your business with better customer relationship management.
Week In Review (8th June 2012)
Posted: Tuesday, June 12, 2012 at 10:32:46 AM EST by Ben Hamiltion
This last week has been a great week, Raahul in our technical team came back to work after a bicycle accident that landed him in hospital. Not only that but, this week marked Raahul's 2nd anniversary of working with us at Evolution Marketing. We are all happy to have him on the team and are pleased he is back on deck.
Handheld Contact (HHC) is a great solution for getting ACT! data onto iPhones, iPads, Androids and Blackberry's and given they reduced the price at the start of the week, we've been deploying a lot more of HHC for our clients. I use it myself.
One of the more unusual jobs this week was a request from a client who had imported a few hundred contacts, they had imported a 'history' entry into the Last Results field. Not wanting in Last Results, we were able to put together a script to copy those entries from Last Results into a History entry, with correct history types and Record Managers.
Remember, we can help get your ACT! together.
The purpose of the ‘Week in review’ blog post: to give our readers some insight into what we are working on. We all get ideas and inspiration from observing the work of other professionals. We hope these short weekly updates deliver this for readers of our blog.
Who this post is for: Existing clients that are looking to get more from their CRM system and the relationship with Evolution Marketing and prospective clients that are interested in see what we can do.
What we do: We help businesses work out what they need to better manage their customer and contact information. We like to understand what your requirements are and then offer you advice on the best systems to achieve those objectives. We also provide Implementation, Training and on-going support. There are 3 CRM platforms we recommend, depending on a clients situation. They include SageACT!, SugarCRM and Nimble. We have a lot of SugarCRM work happening behind the scenes but are currently only sharing what is happening with our SageACT! projects in this blog series.
What would we like you to do: Leave a comment on this post. Follow us on Twitter or Facebook. Send us an email or give us a call. We’re interested in what your problems and goals are around enabling your business with better customer relationship management.
Week In Review (29th June 2012)
Posted: Friday, June 29, 2012 at 10:45:50 AM EST by Ben HamiltionIt's been busy leading up to the end of financial year, we've done more with the great add-on from Xact to display MYOB Exo data inside of ACT!.
One of the great things about that link is that auto linking the MYOB Exo Accounts and the ACT! contact records is quite easy.
Both Brett (in our Sydney office) and Darren (in our Brisbane office) have attended extra vendor training in Sydney for SugarCRM, so they'll be even better able to answer any questions you have about how SugarCRM can help with your workflows.
We've found some issue lately with clients importing data into ACT!, we've found a reliable and cost effective add-on that consitently imports data into ACT!. One of it's great features is the ability to save the 'Merge Configuration'. This means that for those that regularly import data that is the same format each time (same columns) it is now very quick to import. It also gives a meaningful report after the import that details what has occured, the geek in me loves seeing that sort of detailed information.
Also had a client that asked us how to record the the name of the Windows folder in ACT!. They keep client documents on a network drive, and wanted to record the folder name in ACT! i.e. N:\Clients\Doe Jane\
To do this in ACT! we simply created a new URL field in ACT! that has a default value of file:///
Now staff simply add the folder name to what already exists in the field i.e. file:///N:\Clients\Doe Jane\
Because it is a URL field type it means that they can click this and it will open it in Windows Explorer for them. No more wasting time browsing to the folder.
Who this post is for: Existing clients that are looking to get more from their CRM system and the relationship with Evolution Marketing and prospective clients that are interested in see what we can do.
What we do: We help businesses work out what they need to better manage their customer and contact information. We like to understand what your requirements are and then offer you advice on the best systems to achieve those objectives. We also provide Implementation, Training and on-going support. There are 3 CRM platforms we recommend, depending on a clients situation. They include SageACT!, SugarCRM and Nimble. We have a lot of SugarCRM work happening behind the scenes but are currently only sharing what is happening with our SageACT! projects in this blog series.
What would we like you to do: Leave a comment on this post. Follow us on Twitter or Facebook. Send us an email or give us a call. We’re interested in what your problems and goals are around enabling your business with better customer relationship management.
