Small-midsized businesses “SMBs” face the most pressure in a struggling economy to do more with less; they lack even the thin financial cushions of larger enterprises. Every task that they can automate and make more efficient means conserving resources: time and money that they can employ more productively elsewhere. Any means that they can find to obtain more opportunities results in keeping their businesses alive, and hopefully growing.
Sage North America has come out with new tools to enable just that in new Sage ACT! 2011 contact and customer manager along with the Sage Business Info Services for ACT!: the latest Sage Connected Services offering for SMBs.
Here are the details:
* Smart Tasks to automate common marketing, sales and support activities with standard and customizable templates. Smart tasks integrate with the Sage E-marketing for ACT! subscription service so users can add prospects to automated drip marketing e-mail campaigns, track open and click through rates and send welcome messages to new customers, among other capabilities
* Sage Business Info Services for ACT!, a cloud-based subscription service, to import targeted prospect lists from Hoover’s into Sage ACT! and help users identify new selling opportunities. Users can access 65 million companies and 85 million contacts to build lists based on location, company size, title and industry among other criteria
* Microsoft Outlook synchronization to sync Sage ACT! contacts and calendar items with those in Outlook. Data is updated in both locations regardless of where contacts were created or edited. Users control what data is synced back and forth
There are additional enhancements in Sage ACT! 2011including direct import from Excel, a re-designed welcome page with instructional videos, added security settings for managing sensitive e-mails, and compatibility with Microsoft Office 2010 and Firefox.
Sage Connected Services deliversweb-based connected services that the firm says “enhance the productivity of customers’ on-premise software experience”. In addition to Sage Business Info Services for ACT!, other subscription-based Sage Connected Services available for use with Sage ACT! includes Sage E-marketing for ACT! to help design, automate and track e-mail campaigns, and ACT! Mobile Live for wirelessly synchronizing contact and calendar data with BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices. iPhone compatibility is planned for later this year.
The new solutions have come about by listening to SMBs. Larry Ritter, senior vice president and general manager, Sage CRM Solutions reports that the firms uses an online community to communicate with its Sage ACT! Customers, resulting he says in dozens of customers’ enhancement suggestions that have been baked into the Sage ACT! 2011.
“Sage ACT! 2011 builds on the momentum created with last year’s edition,” explains Brent Leary, principal of CRM Essentials. “Sage Business Info Services for ACT! is a great connected services addition to Sage E-marketing for ACT!. Importing prospect lists from Hoover's database of 85 million contacts directly into ACT! streamlines the lead gathering process and works nicely with new smart task capabilities so users can further automate common sales and marketing tasks.”