How to Know When It’s Time to Switch from ACT! to Sage CRM

 

The time has come.

With the recent announcement by Sage regarding their sale of ACT! and SalesLogix, it’s become clear there is a need for change. Change for Sage and change for you.

Is it time to switch from ACT! to Sage CRM?

HINT: Yes, yes it is.

Your business is growing and you are anticipating more growth in the near future. Luckily, you are a savvy entrepreneur who can see the path you are forging ahead of you.

The time has come to update and adapt your CRM systems to handle the influx of new customers.

It’s easy to be comfortable, especially with technology you’ve been using for years.  The last thing anybody wants to do is learn a new computer system when there are sales to make and orders to ship. If I recall correctly, it has never been the comfortable bird/bear/general/CEO that came out on top.

You need to ask yourself: if it’s hard to imagine learning a new system now, how will it be when your customers and work volume have increased by 25%? What about 50%?

Can you even reach that percentage increase with your current CRM?

A transition isn’t such an uncomfortable thought when put it into perspective.

ACT! is built around hosting contact and calendar information in one easy to access spot and is reliable when dealing with a small number of customers. Sage CRM expands on ACT! easy to access contacts and calendars and adds:

• Account Management Features: Contact records – demographic information and account history.
• Activity Management Features: Calendars, task assignments and email integration.
• Call Centre Features: Computer-Telephony Integration (CTI) and call management.
• Collaboration: Employee-to-employee and customer collaboration.
• Customer Service Features: Case management, agent workflow tools and service resolution tools .
• Knowledge Management: A knowledge base for customer service accessible to anybody on your team.
• Marketing Management Features: Email and other channel campaign and project management.
• Mobile Support: Take Sage CRM anywhere with smartphones and tablets.
• Reporting and Analytics: Real-time dashboards for sales, marketing and customer service.
• Sales Management Features: Lead generation, qualification and pipeline management.
• Social Media Features: Social listening, keyword analysis and content creation.

Sage CRM gives you the ability to do everything your business needs in one program.

Upgrading to Sage CRM gives you end to end views of every opportunity in one screen. This means full visibility of not just a customer’s typical contact information but their entire history. It doesn’t take much thought to realize how much time it saves to have everything you need it one spot instead of hunting it down across several files or notes.

Sage CRM is fully customizable. All screens, fields to database level, and entities can be customized the way you want them.

Unlike ACT!, Sage CRM updates your system automatically in real-time. Any updates made by your co-workers or employees are instantly seen and available to everybody at your organization in real-time. Gone are the end-of-the- day syncing between users at different work stations.

Customer service and support through Sage CRM’s self-service web portal and automated email management gives you the power of 24 hour communication without actually being there. Can you imagine if Amazon.com only had 9-5 employees taking orders and responding to customer inquiries? They wouldn’t have the loyalty and business they have now without these abilities that Sage CRM gives you.

Sage CRM has a host of automation methods (which you can find here and here) to keep you on top.

To put it simply, if your business is growing, it has outgrown ACT!.